A/N: So a few chapters ago I asked what everyone wanted to read for an outtake. The result is this - Leah and Nahuel's first time together as told from vamp-boy's point of view. You're a lascivious lot, and I love you all for asking for this! It was majorly fun to write and I hope you'll enjoy reading it, too. Since I couldn't send each and every one of you holiday greetings, please consider this outtake as my "Happy Holidays!" to you. I was going to wait until Christmas to post it, but I'm afraid I'll get caught up in holiday goings-on and not have a chance to do it, so here it is a few days early.

Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

'Love is like the sea, which changes constantly, and yet is still the same.'

- Tanith Lee, 'The Silver Metal Lover'

She steps into the room, and his heart hastens its pace to echo the compelling thrum of hers. Did the cursed thing ever beat before he met her? He is unsure. He only knows that she has commandeered control of its rhythm. Aimless for a dozen decades, now its every throb is drawn forth by the tether she has anchored in his soul.

At last, he has a name for what she has done to him, and an explanation for the compulsion that he has struggled to control and comprehend. He wants to scream at her in accusation. Wants to seize her and shake her until the truth spills from her exquisite, deceitful lips. Wants to lay her on the hard, cold floor and lose himself in the sanctuary of her warmth.

Instead, he turns three slices of bacon and strokes the eggs with the spatula.

The muscles in his abdomen spasm. Longing and lust simmer low in his stomach. He has never vomited before, but he wonders if this tight, winding pain in his gut is driving him to that humiliation. Without turning, he addresses her.

"Please sit down, Leah. Your breakfast is ready."

She moves toward the table, and each step that brings her closer to him blasts wave after wave of her heat and energy against his sensitized skin. He stifles a gasp. Suppresses a groan. The aftershock of each wave slithers down his body like an erotic caress. It is as if she has placed her mouth on his tumescent flesh. He is so hard that he wonders if he can still walk.

He slides the perfectly scrambled eggs and crisp bacon onto a plate where he has already placed four slices of toast. He carries the plate and the coffee mug—the largest he could find—to the table and sets both in front of her.

Because he does not yet trust himself to touch her gently, he sits in the chair farthest from hers. Finally, he permits himself to look at her.

His heart rate accelerates again. His throat narrows to a tightness that must be impossible for sustaining life. It has been just three days since he saw her last, and she has grown even more beautiful in that short time. His craving for her has intensified. He knows exactly why this is so.

She is lovelier, more intoxicating, and more desirable to him because now, at last, he knows that he belongs to her.

She may still deny this truth to herself, but by the end of this day, she will have no doubt. His conviction allows him to retain his self-control, for now, but it is fraying rapidly. He is unsure how much longer he will be able to keep his hands off her, so he pushes the plate toward her.

"Please eat."

He is relieved that the words have not left his lips as a shout. But when she still hesitates, her hand hovering over the fork, he speaks again, more forcefully.

"Eat, Leah. You will not have another chance to do so today."

She studies him warily, and attempts a joke, but he can barely hear it over the thundering current of blood rushing past his ears to pool in his groin. "Why won't I get to eat again?"

Without thinking, he leans forward over the table, so close that her scent—lush and redolent of the rain-soaked forest as twilight descends—threatens to overwhelm his senses. He struggles to maintain control. He is so close. So close to her skin, her hair, her eyes, her lips. So close to dragging her to the floor and claiming her. But that is not what he intends for their first time.

"When you are done with your breakfast, I am going to take you to your bed, and we will not leave it again today."

With the last dwindling remnants of his sanity, he drags himself back in the chair, away from her gravitational pull.

"Perhaps not tomorrow, either."

Her darkling eyes grow round and glisten, the pupils dilating until he can almost peer into her soul. The ambrosial scent of her arousal abruptly permeates the air. She begins to eat quickly and efficiently. She seems focused and cautious, so it is surprising that she speaks at all, let alone gives voice to the most enflaming accusation.

"You left me."

She seems as shocked by her words as he feels. She gasps at her own audacity and begins to choke on her food, spraying fragments of egg from her mouth with each cough. Normally, he would be amused by her display. Or alarmed at her physical distress. But he sees neither the humor nor the risk of her plight.

Instead, he sees a crimson haze ooze across his vision. He sees her through a film of fury.

"You should have told me."

Now he is surprised by his own words. This is not how he had planned to indict her. He had intended to take her to her bed and bring her to climax at least twice before confronting her duplicity. He had planned to pleasure away all her defenses and resistance so that when he finally revealed his heart, she would be too satiated to turn him away.

"What?"

She is confused.

Confused! His anger grows exponentially at the realization that she has no idea why he is furious with her.

He struggles for control and grips the edge of the table to keep his hands from grasping her. He does not want to touch her in anger.

"I should not have had to learn from another that you have imprinted on me. You should have told me."

Her mouth drops and her eyes open impossibly wide. Her delicate nostrils flare, like a wary animal scenting the approach of a powerful predator. Her creamy, coppery skin acquires a purplish undertone just before her mouth snaps shut and her eyes narrow to glittering slits. She throws her fork down and it clatters across the plate. Food spills on the floor. She snarls at him as if he were an ill-behaved animal.

"When was I supposed to tell you? You disappeared for three fucking days. Right after you said you would never leave me, by the way."

He has grown so accustomed to her over-use of profanity that he rarely even notices it anymore. Yet everything she says or does at this moment only serves to enrage him more. The heat of her anger is burning away what little control he has on his own emotions. She is rapidly approaching a line, and he does not know what will happen to them when she crosses it.

He has no doubt that she will cross it. She always does.

She stands, leans forward, braces her hands on the table, and shouts in his face.

"You think you should get to fuck me just because you're my imprint?"

And there it is: his boiling point.

How dare she demean his passion, his adoration, his all-consuming need for her as nothing more than a biological urge?

The crimson haze over his vision turns momentarily black before her face resolves again out of the darkness. Suddenly the room is too bright, the sights, scents and sounds filling it too overwhelming to be borne a moment longer. He must move. He must break something before his rage devours them both.

He surges to his feet and flips the table out of his way. The words he had meant to lay at her feet like a gift in a moment of tenderness pour out of his mouth now, ugly and coarse and disturbingly loud.

"Yes, I want to fuck you! I want to fuck you because I am in love with you!"

She reacts as if he has slapped her. Her face recoils and drains of color. She steps backward, slips on spilled food and crashes limply to the floor. She gapes at him, momentarily wordless, but he knows her. He knows she will try to refute his declaration. She will try to tell him that he does not feel what he knows he feels. The knowledge stokes his wrath to white-hot.

For once, she is actually silent, and he follows her to the floor, pressing the advantage afforded him by her surprise and his fury.

"I am in love with you. You are mine. Mine! And I am yours."

He sits on her thighs, imprisoning her legs. The feel of her lithe, muscled body beneath his draws all his focus to the unbearable hardness between his legs. He is done waiting. Done being patient and considerate. He will take what he wants—what they both want—right here, right now.

Roughly, he begins unbuttoning her shirt. The appalling tremors in his fingers make the task difficult.

"You had no right to keep this from me," he snarls. "I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was becoming like my sire, desiring a human woman to the point of insanity."

His fingers are shaking so badly now that he can no longer manage the damnable buttons. Her hands cover his as if to stop him, but he brushes her touch away. Seizing both sides of her shirt, he yanks on the garment and the buttons separate from the fabric.

With a frantic wrench, he breaks the clasp of her bra. Why would she wear such a device? Her breasts are magnificent. Mouth-watering. Alone in the shower, he has gratified himself countless times with excruciatingly detailed fantasies centered around her breasts. Now, overwhelmed by the need to be inside her, he cannot spare them a second glance and his hands move immediately to her pants.

He unzips them and begins dragging the denim and the cotton undergarment beneath it down her body. He exposes her hipbones and a swath of soft, flat stomach. It has been too long since he last savored the sight of her breathtaking body. He cannot remove her clothing quickly enough, but the cursed pants snag at the point where her delectable bottom meets the floor. He growls his frustration, and without thinking, does what he has grown accustomed to doing in the past month whenever he is experiencing difficulty. He asks for her help.

Except this time it is voiced as a demand.

She does not respond, nor does she do what he has asked. Instead, moving so quickly he cannot react, she drives her hands into the center of his chest and pushes him off her legs. He topples backward to the floor. Surprise and confusion leave him speechless.

She rises and he realizes she is rejecting him, just as he feared she would. That fear kept him away from her for three days—the three longest, loneliest, most miserable days of his entire desolate existence. Only his own wretchedness and the hope he borrowed from Jacob carried him here this morning.

Now he sees his hopes were false, and they have come to this: She stands over him, her clothing torn and disheveled, her exquisite breasts exposed and heaving. She is the most beautiful creature he has ever seen. And she is not his.

Despair engulfs him.

He belongs to her. He always will. But she will never be his.

He cannot decipher her expression. Perhaps she is contemplating rending his limbs from his body for his rough handling of her and his presumptiveness. Ending him now would be a kindness. He studies her expectantly.

Holding his bewildered gaze, she shrugs out of the remnants of her shirt and bra. She slips her hands into her pants, sensually sliding her palms down over either hip bone. She strokes the jeans to the floor and steps out of them. She is gloriously nude before him.

His heart stills.

His breathing falters.

Time stops.

Her strong hand, so much smaller than his, reaches toward him palm up. He stares at it, unable to grasp the meaning of its presence before him. His eyes travel up her slender, muscled arm until they reach her beautiful face. She is smiling. Her voice is soft and hypnotic.

"Are you coming?"

Her words draw his body off the floor and his mouth onto hers as a star gathers in a comet. He does not know where to place his hands first. He needs to touch her, taste her, everywhere. She saturates his senses. He is graceless and greedy, and stumbles her backward toward her bedroom.

He had wanted to fill their first time together with sweet whispers, tender promises and praises of her perfection. Instead, he can barely remember to breathe. He vaguely registers that they are making little progress down the interminable hallway. But desire consumes his reason. He cannot think of a solution to their stalled motion. He simply cannot think at all, let alone manage the complex coordination of two sets of legs and hands.

Once again, she rescues him. Her nimble fingers plunge into his hair, twist and pull his mouth from hers. "Pick me up," she commands.

Of course. This, he can manage. He lifts her, drawing her long legs around his waist. The heat of her naked flesh against his supporting hands nearly unmans him. He clutches her to him and hastens into her bedroom. He stumbles short of the bed and trips, landing them both on the mattress through luck more than design. The fall positions his face directly above her full, flawless breasts. It is more than an opportunity: it is an offering from fate.

She has enjoyed his attentions to her breasts in the past. Now, he worships them with his fingers, his lips, his tongue. When he draws her nipple into his mouth, she cries out. The scent of her arousal changes and he shudders, knowing that if he delves between her thighs now she will be wet and slick, blazingly hot. He wants to taste and savor that nectar, but before he can move she is dragging his shirt over his head and shoulders.

As soon as the cool air touches his skin he knows he must feel the slide of hers against it, and he lowers himself atop her. He means to kiss her senseless before working his way down toward the source of that incredible aroma. But again she derails his intentions. She smoothes her hands down his back and plunges her fingers below his waistband. She cups and fondles his flesh and the erotic newness of the sensation drives him wild.

She has never touched him so boldly before. He no longer doubts that she wants him as madly as he desires her.

Lust clouds his senses and when he resurfaces, his naked erection is poised at the entrance to her moist heat. He is beyond restraint. Since he cannot slow his headlong plunge, he offers an apology instead, his head dropping to her shoulder. "I am sorry, ñi piuque. I cannot wait."

Her answer is to grip him harder and urge him forward. It is more than permission. It is benediction.

With a single powerful stroke, he drives deep into her body.

He is half-vampire, so his mind does not shut down completely. But it is a very near thing.

She is slick and tight, sheathing him in silken paradise, each ridge and fold within her body stroking and squeezing his length perfectly. And the heat of her—it is beyond anything he could have imagined.

He stifles a sob at the fleeting memory of decades wasted plowing the icy depths of more female vampires than he cares to recall. He pushes the thought away. He did not know this feeling existed, did not know she existed. If he had, he would have hunted the ends of the earth to find her. He would have stood sentry on her parents' doorstep waiting for her to be born. He will not wallow in regret over his ignorance. He only cares that he is here, now, within her divine warmth.

He is home.

He tries to call forth his ability to be vampire-still, for he teeters on the edge of release. He does not want this first time to end so quickly. Does not want to plunge into ecstasy alone. He wants her with him when he falls—this first time and every time to come. He wants her with him, always.

But she is squirming beneath him and he realizes she is experiencing some discomfort. He is large, and she is extremely tight. Bringing her to climax will require time and consideration on his part. He is struggling to give her that time, holding perfectly still save for the vibrations caused by his ragged gasps.

Her feet climb up the outside of his thighs. Her toes curl and clench at his hip bones. Her knees nudge beneath his armpits. She is opening her body even wider, and his sex sinks impossibly further into her blazing depths. She is making it monumentally difficult to be considerate.

He groans, a strangled, tortured sound. He pants against her throat and pleads with her to remain still. "If you move now, I will be done."

She rotates her hips, swirling around and gripping his length. Her fire is going to consume him, burn him to ash. Her voice is torturous temptation. "Let go, baby. Just let go."

The urge to ram into her, to mate with her, is flogging away what little remains of his self-control. Still, he struggles to restrain himself. He attempts to restrain her, grasping her hips punishingly to force her into stillness. He can barely control his voice, and it is so ragged he is not confident she can even understand him.

"Not without you."

Her hands stroke across his waist, up his quivering back to his shoulder blades. The knuckles of her balled fists burrow into his muscles. Her heels ride his lower back, pushing him even deeper. He feels her straining beneath him, and her tension passes through the point where his flesh spears into hers and sweeps through his body. He senses frustration and annoyance welling within her.

"Oh my God, Nahuel, if you want me to come, you have to move—"

The mere suggestion of feeling her climax while he is buried inside her wrests a reflexive reaction from his traitorous body. Before his mind can register the movement of his own hips, he's withdrawn a fraction of his length from her. Even this minute loss of her heat slaps his cock coldly and he slams back into her, frantic to recapture the searing pleasure of her possession.

She grunts in delight and he freezes again, feeling the threatening pressure of his impending orgasm.

No, no, no, no, no. Not without her!

His stillness wrings a whimper of frustration from her kiss-swollen lips. She sinks her nails into his back. "Please, baby. Please!"

The last shreds of his self-control shiver away at the sound of her pleading. He can refuse her nothing.

He slips his arms beneath her back, gripping her shoulders from behind, pulling her down to meet each thrust. At first, his movements are frenzied, and disgracefully without rhythm or finesse. His strokes are short and hard. The warm friction is glorious, but he cannot bear even a momentary loss of her heat.

He wants to taste every inch of her, but settles for licking, sucking and kissing wherever he can reach: her clavicle, her graceful throat, the bow of her jaw. She grips his hair and urges his mouth toward her own. As their lips entwine and their breaths mingle, an unexpected, amazing peace overtakes him.

The past month has wrought more change in his life than any of the hundreds he lived through before it. His emotions have been as mercurial as the inexplicable new world he finds himself inhabiting. Meeting her, fearing her, wanting her, hating her for making him want her, wanting her more intensely, realizing that she is a part of him—all this has altered him irrevocably.

Each small sea change has been another drop in the burgeoning swell of his transformation. As her skin slides against his, as she claims his breath and his body for her own, calm acceptance settles over him.

They are together.

He belongs to her.

He loves her.

He is whole.

Her body flexes beneath him and he pushes up on his forearms so that he may watch her face and savor her pleasure. She releases his lips and her eyes open wide, locking on his. Her movements and moans indicate she is approaching her climax. He wants this for her, wants her to lose herself in mindless bliss, wants her to know that he worships every inch of her body and the entirety of her soul.

She is gasping and shivering beneath him, her inner walls clenching tightly around his invading flesh. As her tremors intensify, her back arches off the bed, forcing her breasts more tightly against him. In the second before her orgasm, he sees a flicker of fear in her eyes.

Then it is gone, and she flies apart, crying out in ecstasy.

Entranced, he watches her eyes lose focus and her breath catch. Deep within her body, her inner walls tighten and spasm around his shaft almost painfully, and it is the most delicious, delirious discomfort he has ever experienced.

Now he is beyond thought. He gladly surrenders control to the demands her body is making on his. He holds on just long enough to see her gaze refocus on his face, and to register the total transformation shining through her bottomless, glistening eyes.

He drives into her, forcing their bodies higher on the bed. Once. Twice. A third thrust, and the fire that has been building low in his abdomen finally erupts, ripping through his body and escaping in a roar. He spills himself deep inside her heat. Decades of loneliness and inadequacy, weeks of fear and wanting, wash out of his body, and she takes it all—his love for her, and everything he loathes in himself. And she gives him back peace, acceptance, release.

It is the most transcendent experience of his long life.

He collapses on top of her, still hard and lodged within her. For a time—a few moments or several minutes, he is not sure—he knows nothing save the tender stroking of her fingers through his hair and the satiny feel of her flawless skin beneath his own hand. Even now, he cannot stop touching her.

She captures the fingers that he has been lazily running over her collar bone and breasts, and brings his hand to her mouth. She kisses his fingers one by one, and then tenderly holds them to her lips.

She has not yet verbalized her feelings for him. But this simple gesture, even more than the incredible passion that has just passed between them, speaks clearly what her voice has not yet said.

His love is returned.

He sighs in contentment.

"Thank you, ñi piuque."