A/N: Welcome to my new fic. I'm excited about this one, I've been wanting to write it for awhile. It's going to be a very bumpy ride, I'm warning you now. But there's lots of good times, lots of lemons, and lots of angst to come. And no guarantee of a HEA. You'll just have to take the ride with me and see where it goes.

This is, of course, fanfiction. Stephenie Meyer owns all recognizable elements of Twilight. No copyright infringement intended, and I will not profit from this outside of my own satisfaction.

Such Great Heights

Chapter 1

I was nervous as I parked in front of the small stucco ranch. It was the first time I'd ever been to Alice and Jasper's house. Hell, it was the first time I'd even met them in person. I didn't even know what they looked like! Jasper and I had been online friends for awhile by this time. It started off with hellos here and there, casual conversation and questions about each other's days. Honestly, I never thought much of it back then.

But things changed, as they are ever bound to do. It started with a simple question he asked me one day – did I know Claire Young? I did, but his question led to several more. It seemed that Jasper was writing a novel in his spare time, a historical thriller, I later learned, and Claire was proofreading for him. Or, she was supposed to be. Jasper hadn't heard from her in a while, thus the question to me. Claire, as fate would have it, had prematurely delivered her first child, and had practically moved into the hospital's neonatal unit, so she wouldn't be proofreading anything anytime soon. Having majored in English myself – I was currently working as a reporter for the local newspaper where I lived, a small town in Arizona outside of Phoenix – I offered to take on the job for him.

Who knew that, four months later, I'd be walking up the tan brick path to his front door? I surely did not. But an instant message conversation that we'd had when he was stuck on a plot point had opened the door of friendship for us. That conversation had led to many others; conversations that were much more personal in nature.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean personal in any kind of inappropriate way. I just mean that we were getting to know each other. We talked about music that we liked, books we enjoyed, our favorite movies... We talked about the problems he was having with Alice: she wasn't supportive of his writing venture. In fact, it seemed she wasn't supportive of much when it came to him, unless it was him going to work.

Jasper did work, mind you. He had a job working as a blackjack dealer in a big casino on the Las Vegas strip. He made good money, but it wasn't anything he loved. There were only two things that he did love, really, and that was his writing, and his music.

As I took the step up from the front walk to approach the door, I laughed softly at the memory of the moment I learned about his music. It had only been a few weeks ago. He had mentioned it casually, in passing, that he played guitar, and immediately caught my attention. I'm not going to lie, I have a bit of an obsession with music in general, but especially guitars. Jasper, after much prodding and maybe even a little begging, had finally consented to giving me a listen.

The first mp3 was an instrumental track, an acoustic song he'd written, a little bit alternative, a little bit indie. I liked it. A lot, actually. The second mp3, however, was the one that was the entire reason for the bad case of nerves I was trying to calm as I raised my hand to knock on the door. That second track was not just him playing guitar, but singing. It was a cover of Nirvana's Lithium. I couldn't speak. Seriously. His voice... It was the sexiest thing I'd ever heard, and I was absolutely mesmerized.

I'm pretty sure I embarrassed myself when he asked what I thought, but he was too nice a guy to point that out. And now, five days later, I jumped in surprise when his face popped up in the screen before I could even knock on the door.

I was fucked.

I stepped back as he opened the screen door, and that's when the full effect of Jasper Whitlock hit me. He smiled at me, and my knees went weak. His eyes... They were brown, with flecks of gold, and so damn deep that I swear I could see into his soul. That sounds cheesy, I know, but it doesn't make it less true. At any rate, his eyes totally lit up when he smiled at me, and it took every effort I had to smile back and keep my lips to myself as I accepted the hug that was suggested by his open arms.

"Hey Bella," he said softly as he pulled back from the hug. The hug that was given by two very strong and well-toned arms. He even smelled good.

Fucked, I tell you.

He was nothing like my usual type. Well, I guess I didn't really know exactly what my type was. The only guy I'd been with in the last decade was my asshat of a husband, Edward. I shook my head. I didn't even want to go there tonight. Usually, though, if I was looking at men, I preferred dark hair, long enough that I could play with it, and a clean cut kind of guy. Jasper was none of these. He had blond hair cut super short, maybe only a inch or two off of his head, and I could see points of black ink poking out of the sleeve of his shirt – a tattoo.

Silently begging my lady bits to calm down as I took in the smile on his face, which was completely endearing in the way it all seemed to go to the left side rather than spread equally. But I could tell it was genuine: he was as happy to finally meet me as I was him. Well, maybe not quite as excited. After all, he had Alice, and they were, at least from what he'd told me, happy again, so he probably wasn't fighting the attraction like I was. And I highly doubted he had any desire to have sex with my voice...

"It's good to finally put a face with your name," I said, smiling as I stepped into the house. I looked around the living room. "Where's Alice?"

"She's just getting Peter and Charlotte out of the bath," he replied as he led me to the living room. "Take a seat, she'll be out in a couple of minutes. You want something to drink?"

I settled myself on the sofa as he went to get me a glass of water. I was really excited to meet Alice. She and I had talked online too, but I hadn't really become friends with her like I had Jasper. I was taking her to a concert on the strip that evening – my excuse for making the trip to Vegas – as a way to get to know her better. I didn't want things to be awkward. After all, I had no intentions of doing anything with Jasper, no matter how wet his voice made my panties. He was married, and I was a good girl.

He brought my water in, and we chatted about my drive to Nevada and our plans for the next night, which was when the three of us were going to hang out. We were just discussing what kind of alcohol he should pick up from the liquor store when Alice walked in.

God hates me.

She was gorgeous. Long black hair fell about halfway down her back with a very slight wave. It wasn't until she stepped next to the light that I saw the blue streaks throughout it. They matched her eyes perfectly.

I swallowed hard, trying to regain the ability to speak. She smiled, seeming not to notice my discomfort, and I dropped my eyes from her face shyly. Unfortunately, they landed right on her chest. I should probably admit at this point that I had a sexual relationship with a girl right before I met Edward, and have had a bit of a thing for boobs ever since. These didn't disappoint.

"I heard you suggest tequila to Jasper," she said, a naughty look in her eye. "That's not a very good idea."

Jasper laughed. "Not unless you want Alice here in your lap."

Oh, but I do, Jasper. I so do.

"Shut up, Jasper!" Alice cried. "It was one time!"

I don't know how long I stood there silent, with my eyes glazing over at the thought of Alice's perfect C cups in my hands as those lips, which looked so soft, pressed against mine. What I do know, however, is how horribly embarrassed I was when she giggled as she tucked a finger under my chin to snap my mouth shut.

"You ok there, Bella?" she said softly, the teasing tone in her voice setting me more at ease.

I nodded once. "Bring the tequila, Jasper," I said with a wink. "I'll take my chances."

The look on Jasper's face was priceless, and totally worth it. Alice and I both giggled as he swallowed hard, looking at us with wide eyes as Alice dragged me toward the back of the house.

"Come on, Bella! We've got to hurry up and get ready or we'll be late to the concert."

We got dressed side by side in Jasper and Alice's bedroom. Just like the rest of the house, their room was really simple, no real decorating scheme going on, just a big blue striped blanket on the top of the bed. Alice, however, was anything but simple. She put on skinny jeans that hugged her body perfectly – Alice was skinny, but the girl had a perfectly rounded ass and hips that were begging to be grabbed on to. I can't deny having snuck a peek at her while she was sliding the jeans up and caught sight of her lime green and hot pink striped boyshorts.

She was going to kill me.

With her jeans, she wore a low cut black tee shirt with a lacy blue cami underneath and super sexy strappy black sandals. I felt plain standing beside her, wearing dark straight leg jeans and a brown button-down blouse that tied with a bow around the waist, but Alice was ready to help. She gave me some chunky gold and bronze bracelets that were a good match to my shoes. I smiled at my reflection, and Alice smiled into the mirror as well.

"We look hot. Let's have Jasper take a couple of pictures, then we'll go," she said.

I loved her confidence.

I also loved the idea that she included me in the hotness. Then I took a deep breath, reminding myself that Alice was as much off limits as Jasper before following her out into the living room.

Several pictures and a hug from Jasper later, Alice and I were out the door and sitting in her car – an older Honda Accord that wouldn't have suited her at all except that she'd added her own sort of pizzaz to it in the form of a disco ball hanging from the rearview mirror and seat covers in shades of purple stripes throughout. I shook my head as I saw it, laughing too softly for her to hear. Seems Alice liked stripes everywhere.

The concert was fantastic – it was a relatively unknown band that I was huge fan of. Their sound was a mix of rock and funk, and even though Alice had never heard them before that night, she was a great sport, and I could tell she was enjoying herself. I was pretty caught up in watching the stage – I spent most of my time staring at the hands of whichever band member was playing guitar – but every so often, my eyes left the stage to look at Alice. I couldn't help but smile as I saw her dancing to the beat, her long hair swinging from side to side and a look of pure joy on her face. Every time, I thought again just how beautiful she was.

When the show was over, Alice and I, both of us having consumed more than our share of alcoholic beverages during the concert, walked out of the small club and into the casino it was attached to. We'd reserved a room for the night, having expected to be too drunk to drive, and, at Alice's suggestion, we decided to try out luck at some games before we went to bed.

Five shots of Southern Comfort and $340 in my pocket later, Alice was getting a kick out of my bad case of the giggles. I was no longer convinced that my winning streak would last, though, so we decided to take our winnings and head up to bead while we could still get there.

I laughed at Alice as she swayed while we waited for the elevator. She'd been drinking Jack Daniels, but had matched me shot for shot, and it showed. We made it up to the room, and after a quick change into our pjs, during which, yeah, I'll admit, I shamelessly checked out Alice's tits, we both collapsed onto one of the two queen-sized beds and promptly passed out.

The next morning we were both a little hungover, but nothing that wasn't manageable. We hit the breakfast buffet at the casino, and then Alice took me on a walking tour of the strip, letting me see each of the major hotels and the crazy people lining the street. It was completely different than anything I'd ever seen in Arizona; I swear my mouth must have been gaping the entire time.

"Alice," I whispered, completely in awe by the replica of the Eiffel Tower, "this is incredible. It's like we're traveling the entire world just walking down one street."

She smiled, that completely dazzling smile of hers that I wanted to stare at even more than the sights around me. "It's very cool. I'm still impressed by it all after having lived near here my whole life." She stopped walking and reached in her pocket, pulling out her cell. She looked at the screen for a moment, and then giggled softly.

"What's so funny?" I asked, tilting my head to the side in curiosity.

"It's Jasper," she explained. "Again." Alice giggled again. "I think he's anxious for us to get back. This is his fifth text today."

"Maybe we should go, then?" I suggested.

"Lunch first. I want to take you for a surf and turf buffet. It's something you have to do when you're here in Vegas. Can you even imagine, Bella? $5 for all the steak and lobster you can eat!"

I couldn't believe it. My mother's father had been a butcher; I knew a lot about meat. $5 for as much steak as you wanted? "Alice, I don't eat dog," I said, feeling a little uneasy.

Her tinkling laugh filled my ears as she doubled over, grabbing her sides. "Oh my god, Bella!" she exclaimed. "Why on earth...?"

She was laughing so hard that she was having trouble getting the words out. I explained my thought process, which just made her laugh harder. A minute later, shaking her head at me as she led me into the Bellagio, Alice was explaining why good things could be so cheap in Vegas.

The steak really was good. Fantastic, even. I may have moaned when I chewed the first bite. I completely ignored the lobster - I'm not a fan of ripping apart the body of the animal as I'm eating it. I'm not a caveman, after all. Over lunch, I brought up a subject that I considered pretty important.

"Alice," I began, waiting her to look up and meet my eyes. "I just want to assure you that I'm not after Jasper. He's my friend, but that's it, ok? I know that you might have heard..."

"Shut up, Bella," she interrupted. "I'm not worried about it, alright? I don't care what the high school gossip is that went around before. Look, I hereby give you my permission to do whatever you want with Jasper, so long as you don't get naked and have sex with him on skype."

"God, who even does that?" I laughed.

We dissolved into giggles. It was only the night before that a drunken Alice had shared with me the story of a really good friend of hers, who had somehow gotten in a rather ridiculous fight with another girl. It was the reason for the fight that I didn't really understand, but it had something to do with the one girl inviting the other to watch as she and her husband had sex on skype. Apparently, it hadn't gone so well.

We kept talking as we finished up our lunch, then wrapped up a porterhouse to take home to Jasper – Alice said that was his favorite – and made our way back down the strip to The Tropicana, where we had left our car.

We talked the entire half hour drive home. I was really getting to know quite a bit about Alice on this little excursion, and I was finding that I liked her a lot. Sure, I'd always found her amusing online, but this was the first time I really felt like I knew her. I was really glad that I'd made the decision to take her to the concert with me, and I was really hoping that it would be the beginning of a really great friendship between the three of us.

Later that evening, after Jasper all but inhaled his steak and we spent a little time watching a movie with Peter and Charlotte, who had to have been the most adorable kids I'd ever seen, Jasper and I found ourselves sitting together in the living room while Alice was putting her kids to bed.

"So," he prodded. "How was your night out with Ali?"

I grinned. "We had a really good time. I like her, Jasper."

He reached over and squeezed my hand. "I'm glad to hear it. I was hoping you two would get along. It was real sweet of you to take her to that concert."

I blushed a little. "I just didn't want things to be weird for us. I mean, you and I are such good friends... I didn't want her to think I was here with bad intentions. I want us all to be friends."

"And we will be," Alice interjected as she walked back in, a smile on her face. "Now, I don't know about you, but after that movie, I'm thinking a drink is in order."

Jasper agreed immediately, and set off into the kitchen behind her, motioning for me to come along. I laughed when we entered the room – it seemed that Jasper couldn't make a decision about what kind of alcohol to buy, so there was a little bit of everything.

Including tequila.

I decided to play it safe, though, and took the bottle of Malibu, pouring myself a shot. Jasper poured two shots of Jack, handing one to Alice.

I held my glass up. "Shall we?" I grinned at my new friends, who nodded back in response.

"1, 2, 3, fuck it!" It was the traditional toast used for shots by our circle of internet friends, and that was the first of many times I used it that night.

Several shots later, I had convinced Jasper to get his guitar our and play for us. He was a little drunk already, and it was showing up in his ability to remember lyrics and chord progressions, but that didn't make his playing any less mesmerizing for me.

I had switched from Malibu to Southern Comfort after his first couple of songs, and was at least on my fourth shot of that when I started begging him to sing. There's no two ways around it, I was drunk. Not shit-faced yet, but definitely drunk. Jasper had had several shots of Jack before mixing a large tumbler of Jack and Coke which he was nursing between songs, so it wasn't all that difficult to convince him to sing.

I blame his song choice for everything that followed.

It was Nirvana again, Something In The Way. The song fucking IS sex. And with his voice? I was done for.

"So, we haven't even opened the tequila yet," I said as the fullness of the last chord faded from the room, a teasingly wicked glint in my eye.

Jasper laughed. "I got some," he said with another left-sided grin. "You sure you want it?"

I was.

"1, 2, 3, fuck it!" we chorused as we threw back the second shot of tequila in a row.

My belly felt warm and I was quickly overtaken by giggles as I watched Alice shudder at the harshness of the burn. "I fuckin love tequila," I announced, noticing the slight slur in my words.

That wasn't the only thing I was noticing. Oh no. Alice's lips had taken over my mind. Her lower lip was much fuller than the upper, which was special in that it had no middle indent, but instead curved over her teeth like a rainbow's arch when she smiled. They were a dark pink even though she wore no lipstick – almost like she had eaten a whole bunch of raspberries recently. I wondered if they tasted like raspberries too. I was sitting so close to her that I swear I could perfectly imagine what they'd feel like. They looked soft, almost like chenille. I wondered if that was possible.

Yeah, I was definitely drunk.

Jasper was still playing his guitar. Well, kind of. At this point, he was probably as drunk as I was, and he was fucking up more than he was playing right. I didn't care. I liked listening even when it wasn't perfect. Quite honestly, though, I wasn't paying very much attention to anything other than Alice's lips.

I wondered if they had been serious the night before, when Jasper had mentioned Alice's previous reaction to tequila. Then I wondered what she would do if I kissed her. I supposed that we were drunk enough to excuse the inappropriateness of the kiss, so she probably wouldn't hit me. Hopefully.

Damn it all to hell, I just didn't care. I simply had to taste those lips.

So I did.

I leaned in to her, meeting her eyes as I did. She knew what I was going to do before I actually did it, but she didn't pull away. I took that as a sign of her acceptance, and moved the last few inches toward her until our lips touched.

Oh god, her lips WERE soft! I felt that kiss with my entire body; it started at my lips, but the tingles and warmth that it caused spread through my body like a wildfire.

My tongue slipped past her lips and into her mouth, and I heard us moan together as it met hers. My hand reached out, without any conscious thought on my part, and found the back of her head, my fingers winding in her soft black and blue hair and holding her against me. I was completely lost in the kiss. I forgot where I was, who I was, who she was... Nothing mattered at all except for the way her lips felt against mine.

I don't know how long that kiss lasted, but as some point, my body completely ran out of oxygen, so I had to pull away, no matter how much I didn't want to. As my lips left hers, I gasped for air. It had been the best kiss of my life up until that moment, hands down.

In the two seconds that passed after we stopped kissing, I tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened. They may have been the longest two seconds ever. I had just kissed Alice Whitlock. I had just kissed Jasper's wife.

Oh god! Jasper!

I opened my eyes to look at him, ready to apologize for my horrible drunken betrayal. But instead of seeing him sitting across from me, angry, I was met with the sight of his face, merely centimeters from mine, his eyes hooded with lust, just before he kissed me.

A/N: I'd really love to hear what you think so far.