In the Clear Light of Day

It was a Saturday afternoon, the Cullen house was empty, and Edward had a new bed – a bed on which Bella found herself, Edward beside her.

He rolled her over across the wide smooth expanse of the sheets, and, holding himself up above her on his elbows, lightly traced the outline of her lips with his cool tongue.

Bella's lips parted involuntarily and she was suddenly, urgently, aware of the weight of him lying above her, pressing her hips into the mattress. He had held her close before but not like this, not so fully pressed to him, his long legs sprawled around hers. A vein of fire lanced through her, from her constricted throat to low in her belly. She took a shuddering breath and her eyelids fluttered closed. As if of their own volition, her hands clutched at the side belt loops on his jeans, pulling him down more tightly against her as she snaked her legs around his.

Edward pulled back. Sensing his reaction, Bella opened her eyes with an effort. His amber gaze was guarded and wary. Knowing that his next words would be, no, Bella, time to stop, she pushed herself up on her elbows, seeking his lips with hers. Her mouth met his briefly and he pulled back again, moving away from her with less of his customary grace than she had ever seen. Bella followed, reaching for him, until somehow they were kneeling facing each other in the middle of the bed. Edward's eyes were still guarded, but his hands were on her hips, and if he wasn't pushing her away.

She stretched up to kiss him again, keeping her lips soft, and when she sucked gently at his lower lip, she felt him respond. Swiftly, without asking permission -- as if I could escape his attention, she thought -- she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. When he didn't stop her, she continued, traveling lower and lower, until the fabric parted under her hands. Fingers tingling, she slid her hands under his shirt, tracing the marble-cool contours of his chest. He broke off the kiss, eyes searching her face, the tiniest crease appearing between his eyebrows.

"Bella…" Her name from his lips was a half-whisper, a plea.

She slid her hands to his shoulders, pushing his shirt back so that it dropped down to the crooks of his arms. He was still watching her, and she took a deep breath, looked straight into his golden eyes, and grabbed the hem of her tee-shirt, ready to pull it over her head.

"Bella." His hands clasped her wrists, stilling her; his voice was less uncertain now. All at once the words broke from her.

"Oh, Edward, please." His hands didn't release her. "Please, what are we waiting for?" He didn't say anything, but the frown was more pronounced between his eyes now. "I'm here," she murmured. "I'm willing. I want this." She was being outrageously forward, she knew, and the color rose in her cheeks, but he seemed to sense the heat under her skin and watched her face with his lips slightly parted. There was desire in him still, no matter how he might try to repress it. "I want you," she said, and bent her head to kiss his hand where it encircled her wrist. He was watching her, helplessly, and she parted her lips and sucked the tip of his thumb into her mouth, ice on her tongue.

In a flash he was across the room, and Bella toppled forward on the bed, catching herself with her hands just in time. Edward was breathing heavily as he pulled his desk chair in front of him, as if to make a barrier between himself and the bed. He passed a hand distractedly through his hair and shrugged his shirt back onto his shoulders, though he made no move to button it back up.

"Bella, we can't." His voice was strained.

She sat back on her heels. "We can't even try? We won't know until we try."

He closed his eyes, gripping the back of the chair until the wood and leather creaked ominously. "You don't know what you're asking for."

Anger suddenly blossomed inside her. "I know exactly what I'm asking for," she burst out. "I'm tired of the teasing, and I think you are too. Do you expect me to be satisfied forever with a few kisses? Are you satisfied with just a few kisses here and there?" He opened his eyes and shot her a look so filled with naked hunger that the fire throbbed in her again, as well as a flicker of hope. Her voice dropped. "I'm here, and I love you, but I hate that you're making me beg."

He gave a groan of longing and strode toward the bed, knocking the heavy chair easily out of his way. "Do you think I don't want this, too?" he breathed, climbing onto the bed, pulling her to him with one arm wrapped around her waist. "Do you honestly believe I don't think about it every time I'm with you?" he breathed in her ear, his free hand twining in her hair. Bella, stunned by his nearness, couldn't respond. "But it would be so easy -- so terribly easy -- to lose control," he whispered, pulling back from her, hands on either side of her face. "I hate to think I might never be able to be with you fully, the way you want. But I also can't bear to think what might happen to you if I can't control myself."

Bella reached up to touch his face, tracing the outline of his downturned mouth. He turned his head and kissed her palm, inhaled against the inside of her wrist. "You won't hurt me," she whispered. "I trust you not to hurt me, Edward."

His eyes closed as if in pain. "You don't know," he mumbled into her palm.

"I do know." She stroked the glorious coppery mess of his hair. She was losing him, and knew it -- he was retreating into the iron shell of his will, but it stung like rejection. The tears were going to start soon, and she hated them, hated her weakness in the face of his strength. She bit her lip fiercely, the heat rushing to her face, eyes and throat tight with unshed tears.

"Bella." Edward was looking into her face, curious. She blinked hard, and he stroked the line of her jaw, the red unhappy swelling under her eyes. "You really want this," he said softly, wonder in his voice. "And not just because you think it will make me happy. You want this."

She sniffled inelegantly and was mortified, but nodded. "Of course I do."

"You're not going to let it go, are you?"

She looked right into his eyes, and shook her head.

He drew her to him, pressed his forehead to hers, and as always her heart accelerated with his closeness. He made a soft sound of disbelief. "I can hear you respond to me," he whispered. "Somehow I always convinced myself that you didn't really desire this. That I was only projecting my own desire onto you." He laughed softly. "I thought there was no way you could want me as much as I want you."

Bella chuckled, hope flaring deep inside her. "You're not in the Victorian era anymore, Edward."

His hands stroked up and down her back, her arms, and the goosebumps followed his touch. "I don't deserve this trust you have in me."

She pressed herself against him, and he made a soft sound of wanting. "We can get hurt no matter what we do," Bella whispered, feeling the ring of truth in her voice. "If I had chosen to do this with Mike Newton or Jacob Black they could have hurt me too."

Edward's eyes snapped open, and in the space of a heartbeat he had whirled her around and laid her on the bed. "Mike Newton or Jacob Black," he repeated in a growl. "Neither of them --" he murmured, planting kisses on her lips, her cheekbones, her jawline, "will ever touch you --" settling his weight alongside her, above her, "ever again. Not until my ashes are scattered to the four winds," he whispered into the hollow at the base of her throat.

Bella gasped, tipping her head back into the feather pillows. "That will never happen," she whispered over his head. "I won't let them scatter your ashes unless they're mingled with mine."

Despite the cold of his body, she was on fire from his touch, from the play of his muscles as he moved above her, from the weight of him against her. She throbbed wherever he touched her, as his hands roamed more freely than they ever had before – curling under her ribs, spanning the flat soft plane of her stomach. His mouth covered hers hungrily. On a sudden impulse, she seized his wrist and pulled his hand to her breast.

Edward reared up away from her and looked down at his hand, cupping her over her shirt, with a disbelief that was almost comical painted across his face. "This…" He looked up at her face, then back at his hand. "This is really okay?"

She laughed, a little giddily. "Yes, of course it's okay," she said, breathlessly. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."

His hips moved infinitesimally against her, and he tried an experimental stroke of his thumb over her nipple. She gasped with the shadow of a moan, and he echoed the sound, bending to her mouth again, hand working softly at her breast.

She tugged at his shirt again, and in a moment it was gone. She traced his broad shoulders and the long muscles of his back, her hands roaming farther and farther until they reached the waist of his jeans. Feeling bolder than she had ever been, she wriggled under him and wrapped her legs around him, so that he might feel the heat that was radiating from her deepest center.

He groaned and sat back, pulling her up with him with one arm around her waist, as if she weighed nothing. He settled her in his lap, pulling her hips flush against his until she thought the friction between them would drive her wild. His hands slipped under her shirt and pulled it smoothly over her head. Yes, Bella cried silently; her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, and Edward watched the silken chestnut strands settle, then tangled his fingers in them, crushing her to him in a kiss that took her breath away.

He pulled back and gazed at her, hunger warring with something like sorrow in his eyes. "So it's to be now, is it?" he whispered.

Bella bit her lip, nodded.

He kissed her once, lightly, on the bitten lip, then shifted his weight forward, laying her back gently on the bed with one hand cradling her head as if she might shatter like glass. He knelt above her, bending to press his lips beneath her ear in a cold, open-mouthed kiss. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," he murmured in her ear, and her breath caught in her throat. He slid lower and kissed the arch of her collarbone, easing the strap of her bra down off her shoulder. "Old time is still a-flying." His fingertips skimmed across her stomach, and he kissed the swell of her breast above the edge of her bra. "And this same flower that smiles today –" His fingers slid over the satin, then under it, and fire lanced straight through Bella, and she arched against him. He pulled back and looked at her flushed face, at the rosy nipple peeking above the pink fabric. "My God, Bella, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

He leaned forward, and his lips closed around the hard peak of her nipple, so softly.

She gasped, gripping his arms, lost in the sensations as he pushed the satin away from her other breast and teased the nipple to hardness with his fingers, still lavishing the other with little sucking kisses. She moaned softly, and he smiled against her skin.

And yet – and yet. Even with his fingers and lips moving on her, shocking her with the strangeness of his touch where no one had touched her before, her mind played back the words he had whispered over her. He hadn't finished the poem, and some involuntary memory from a long-ago English class inexorably provided the final line: Tomorrow will be dying.

His hand had drifted to the button at the waist of her jeans and hesitated there, waiting. This same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying. Bella's throat suddenly closed. She was dying, tomorrow, and today, and every day, every instant. All while Edward stood immutable and immobile, a marble statue, just turning his head, just reaching out his hand to brush her cheek as she flew past him. How brief she must seem to him, and how temporary. Even as her body thrilled to his lips and his hands, she closed her eyes in pain against the ache that had settled around her heart.

She twined her fingers in his hair. "Edward," she breathed. In a moment he was lying alongside her again, and she opened her eyes to his face, perfect and unchanging. She knew she must do something or else burst into tears. She kissed his shoulder, and he let her roll him over until, with more confidence than she felt, she straddled his hips and knelt over him.

He was too beautiful, lying there looking up at her. Her heart would break just for the bronze-dark hair on the creamy pillowcase, the gemstone eyes, the half-smile playing on his lips. She was barely breathing as she reached behind herself and unclasped her bra, letting the scraps of satin slide down her arms and away, watching his eyes as they flickered down over her body. She knelt up and unzipped her jeans, working her way awkwardly out of the denim and tossing them on the floor. She straddled him again, his hands sliding up the outside of her bare thighs until they rested on her hips. She turned her attention to the buttons of his fly. Her eyes went to the bulge there, the strange evidence of his otherness, familiar but new, expected yet alien. Her fingers brushed over it as she worked the buttons, and his body tensed. When she looked back at his face he was no longer smiling, eyes dark with desire.

"Bella," he murmured, "we can still stop."

But the rosebud is dying. She knew now, with an intuition that throbbed to her core, that this was the time, and that she could enslave him, body and soul. She leaned down toward him and felt the sharp intake of his breath as her hair brushed over his chest, as her breasts pressed lightly into him. "I don't want to stop," she breathed warm into his ear, then slid back along his body, settling back against his hips and pressing herself against the new, strange hardness there.

A low moan broke from Edward and he gripped her hips, lifting her briefly to the side while he wrestled with his jeans, then they were gone and he pulled her over him once more. The fire was waking again in her, echoing his, centered where she straddled him, and she whimpered at the pressure, grinding helplessly against what was only separated from her by two thin layers of fabric. His hands slid upward over her, tangled briefly in her hair, then, with swift surety and surprising gentleness, stroked over her breasts. His touch was ice and fire together, and she cried out, her head tipping back.

"Oh God, Bella," he whispered.

His eyes were dark and hooded as he pulled her down, capturing her mouth with his, rolling her over again. She found herself looking up at him, and his face was utterly open, desire and anxiousness and delight and unbelief chasing each other across his features. "I can't… I can't believe you're…" he whispered.

"Just kiss me," she whispered back.

Time had no meaning in the delirium of skin on skin. His hands roamed across her body, and she felt that each nerve ending was a hair trigger, needing only the slightest touch to set her on fire. He was exquisitely responsive to her, sighing and moaning against her mouth as her hands traced the strong planes of his body. She felt wild and exultant under his hands and his mouth, and she squirmed under him, seeking desperately either to ease or intensify the dull throb between her legs, yearning for his corresponding parts.

All at once he stilled, his hand gripping hers. "Bella," he whispered, and guided her hand down to the strange hardness that pushed against the fabric of his boxer shorts.

She bit her lip and gently stroked the long shaft through the thin cotton. Edward watched her eyes, her mouth. Before she could lose her nerve, she slipped her hand under the waistband of his shorts and circled him with her fingers, then stroked once lightly, up toward the head. He took a shuddering breath, pupils dilating into pools of blackness within the gold. The skin was icy but velvety and smooth, silk over iron.

"Is this – is this ok?" she asked breathlessly.

He nodded, eyes locked on hers, full of need and wariness.

She explored him, pushing his boxers down with her free hand, and he rolled away briefly and worked them off. When he pressed himself against her again, she sought him with her hand and took a firmer grip, stroking the heavy ridge with her fingertips, rubbing the slit in the head, spreading the cool bead of liquid there. He hissed, his eyes closing, bending his head to her throat, to her breast.

Bella whimpered and then his hands were roving downward, down her ribs, down her belly, taut with her breathlessness. One hand traced maddening little circles on her hip, inching across her lower belly, while he nudged her legs apart with his knee, and she opened to him. Infinitesimally slowly, he crept his fingers down over the silken fabric, until he cupped her most secret parts in his hand. Bella stopped breathing, and they hung together, suspended, and then his fingers moved against the aching bundle of nerves, and she melted under him.

And his fingers were sliding under the elastic and she raised her hips so he could pull them down her legs, and she was naked before him as she had never been for anyone, and he was kneeling between her legs in the afternoon light, and he was Apollo and Lancelot and David with his sling and all the heroes of all the stories, and she was Eve with the bite of apple between her lips, opening her eyes for the first time. And there was such joy in his face, and such pain, for her, for her, for her.

"You're so beautiful," Edward said.

She reached for him.

He fell into her arms, all his skin against all her skin, and she curled her legs around him, fitting her softness against his hardness, her heat against his ice. His hand crept down between their bodies and stroked through her damp curls, opening her delicate folds. She cried out softly when his fingers dipped inside her, spreading the slick wetness over her skin, and he danced around the center of her need until she shook helplessly under him. She was overwhelmed; it was too much and not enough, together. The waves of warmth threatened to swamp her, and she was almost afraid, not knowing if she would arise the same person after such a baptism.

Now. "Edward," she whispered against his skin. "I'm ready."

He pulled back and looked into her eyes, and whatever he saw there must have answered all his questions, because his fingers were gone and she felt instead the cool blunt head of him rubbing through the slick folds of her skin. He took a breath in, closed his eyes, and pushed the head inside her. Bella's instinct took over and her hips arched up toward him, welcoming him.

Then a barrier, and a tearing, and a flash of pain. She winced, recoiling, and he immediately stilled his movement. "Am I hurting you?" he murmured, bending to kiss her neck.

She shook her head, trembling. "Just go slowly," she whispered. She breathed deeply, trying to relax, forcing her muscles to release by sheer will. With a groan of desperation he began to move again, his whole body tense. She clung to him, anchoring herself in the coiled strength in the muscles of his shoulders and arms, accommodating him as he penetrated her.

"Oh God," he moaned. "You're so warm – oh Bella –"

Bella whimpered as he slid deeper inside her, pushing farther and farther until she thought she would break in half, riding the line between pleasure and pain. This is it, she thought, half-coherently. I'm giving myself to him. At last his hips pressed fully into hers and they were utterly joined. He paused there, motionless, but the strangeness was more than she could bear, and the tension stretched until she thought she might scream.

"Edward," she cried, and he began to move.

Her breath came in shallow gasps as he slid slowly back and then forward again. With each pass he pressed against her deepest places, and she rocked back against the pillows. The pain subsided until it was only a dull reminder, and the piercing cold of him began to warm to her flesh.

Through the haze of adrenaline and newness, she watched his face. His eyes were shut tightly, the muscles of his jaw working as he clenched his teeth. Their bodies had found a slow steady rhythm, but she was distracted, watching Edward in his obvious labors to be careful with her. He held his weight up on his elbows and knees and kept his eyes firmly shut. He's holding himself back, she thought desperately. He's keeping himself from me.

The tightness was back in her throat. "Edward," she whispered suddenly, even before she herself knew she would speak. He stilled instantly, lowering his head to nuzzle at her neck. She lifted her hands to his head and pulled him up to face her, but his eyes were still closed. "Edward, you can't pretend I'm not here." He made an inarticulate sound of protest, half-hearted. A throb of panic crept into her voice. "Please let go – let yourself feel it."

"I'll hurt you if I do." His voice would break her heart, the fear and pain and desire tangled in his throat.

"You won't," she whispered, almost in tears. "I know you won't. Edward, please." Longing for the weight of him, she pressed herself up toward him, tilting her hips up to him, taking him in as deeply as she could.

His eyes opened at last, the great pupils dilated black, and with a convulsive shudder he inhaled deeply. Bella realized belatedly with a thrill of something almost like terror that he had been holding his breath. But the scent of her seemed to send him over the edge.

"Bella – I can't – I can't –" he almost sobbed.

"Go," she whispered.

That was her last conscious thought, for he was thrusting in earnest now, his strokes powerful and purposeful. She was swept along in the maelstrom of his urgency until she found herself again on the precipice of blinding pleasure and pain. Heart racing, she clung to him, matching him in his need, gasping as he drove her to new heights.

Then all at once his breathing was ragged and his body convulsed against her, inside her. The pain suddenly stabbed through her again and Bella cried out, but then it was over, his movements slowing, his rapid breath subsiding. She buried her face against his shoulder, eyes closed, trembling in his wake. Her thoughts were a confused flurry but she let herself lie still against him, the enormity of what they had just done pressing down on her.

Edward moved first, pulling out of her in a fluid movement. She gingerly unwrapped her legs from his waist, eyes still closed, feeling the first protests from hip joints unused to such exercise. Edward was pushing himself up and she reached for him, expecting to feel his arms around her. But abruptly he was gone and she opened her eyes in surprise, feeling suddenly cold.

He knelt between her legs, sitting back on his heels, studying her. Bella felt suddenly very exposed under his gaze and made a movement to reach for the bedsheet with an embarrassed laugh, twisting her hips away from him, but his hands stopped her. She looked questioningly up into his face and realized with a jolt that the eyes looking down at her were flat, black, empty.

"Edward?" she asked uncertainly.

He said nothing, but moved slowly, so slowly. She felt a light touch, a finger, no more, between her legs. He raised his hand, looking with a curious detachment at the tip of his index finger. It was smeared with blood – her blood.

Bella's stomach dropped.

With the same agonizing slowness, Edward raised his finger to his mouth, wrapped his lips around the tip. His eyes closed.

Vampire, whispered a voice, long-suppressed, in Bella's mind. Her heart began to race.

His eyes slowly opened, and locked on hers. The monster flashed behind the blackness. His beautiful features twisted inexorably into a predator's snarl.

Her limbs felt numb and she tried to move slowly, but she couldn't control herself. Some ancient flight instinct seized her and she scrambled clumsily away from him toward the head of the bed. And in a movement of feral grace he crouched and made a spring for her, pinioning her to the mattress, his body crushing hers once more but in a very different way. Her head crashed against the headboard, and his hand came up around her throat, forcing her head back. His teeth were against the side of her neck, under her jaw; she could feel their razor edges, and his cold breath hissing against her skin.

This is the end, thought Bella, her traitor heart flying in its final moments.

For an instant, time stood still.

And then the hand at her throat began to shake and the razor teeth retreated. Edward uttered a strangled cry and suddenly his weight was gone from her. She struggled upright, panting, as adrenaline and fear roiled sickeningly in her stomach. She couldn't get a proper breath. Her shaking hand flew to her throat, where she found nothing but a patch of his saliva – his venom – on her skin.

Edward was crouched as far away from her as the room would allow, his whole body trembling, his icy pallor even whiter than usual. His flat black eyes held horror and revulsion – and yet hunger.

Even through her panic, Bella's heart melted and she moved to go to him. "Edward –"

He jerked himself to standing. "Don't come near me."

She winced at the raw anguish in his voice. "Edward, I –"

"Get out of here, Bella," he growled.

"But I –"

Fury and self-loathing snapped in him and his eyes blazed into black supernovas. "GET OUT!" he roared, the cords standing out on his neck, and he seized the edge of the massive bookshelves beside him and yanked them off the wall. Books and cds flew wildly as the shelves crashed down, jewel cases shattering, discs littering the floor like silver scales.

Bella tore a sheet from the bed and fled toward the door. Behind her, Edward let out a guttural roar of pure pain, like a wounded lion. As she wrenched the door open and stumbled into the hall, she heard a deafening crash. She didn't look back to see what he'd thrown through the wall of windows. The sound might have been all the glass in the world breaking, or his heart.

***

Author's note:

This is an Eclipse-era canon fic, basically my version of how I wanted the books to go. If you're interested in my explanation of the reasons for this story, go see my profile – I'm not going to bore you here by writing a long note. Suffice it to say, I hope you stick with me for this little journey. There will definitely be angst, and there will possibly be blood (mwa ha ha), and also, I hope, some redemption. Everything here belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Fathomless love to my sister and beta and partner-in-crime, mllebojangles.