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Prelude	By : belladonnacullen Category: Twilight Series > Het > Bella/Edward Views: 5838 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or make any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Author's Note: When converting my files over to text for this site, try as I might, I can't make italics happen. So some of this may get a little confusing since the thoughts Edward hears are supposed to be in italics. Sorry!! I'm open to any suggestions for fixing this. Thanks for reading!
My mind wasn't on hunting. Five deer, an elk and a mountain lion were dispatched quickly. I had no desire to stalk and pretend to struggle with the kill as we often did on our hunting trips. It was not lust for the kill that had driven me to overdo my feeding. From an outcropping of rock I watched Jasper speed off toward the western slopes of the Olympic Mountains following a new scent, and I saw Emmett tussle with a mid-sized grizzly in a clearing to the south. Grizzly was Emmett's favorite, in a never-ending quest to show-up the bear that had brought an end to his human life. He could have easily done away with this young bear, but he savored the kill and the obvious frustration that it brought to his animal victim.
My vampire senses were hyper-aware of my setting, but my mind was two hundred miles away with my heart, in Forks, WA. I had proposed this impromptu hunt based on my discussion with Bella last night. If there was any chance that I was going to get closer to her over these next weeks I had to be sure that my appetite was sated. Not that it would ever change the way she smelled to me. But if there was any way to reconcile my tender love for Bella with all-consuming fire I felt when I touched her warm skin, I thought being well fed was part of the equation.
With perfect clarity I could remember the way she smelled to me on her first day of school over a year ago. The smell that made me doubt my carefully cultivated civility and nearly caused the monster in me to surface. And then my mind quickly strayed to the look she gave me as I glared at her, trying unsuccessfully to mask my animal thirst. That looked of fearful understanding was one of the most powerful things that held me back in Bella's presence. I never wanted her to look at me like that again.
I quickly checked myself. I did tend to wallow in the negative. Here Bella had agreed to be my wife, she had said yes to me in the most absolute sense of the word. She wanted me. It defied explanation and it made me happier than I had ever been in my long existence.
I purposefully tried to shift my mind toward more pleasing thoughts, and I ran through some of my favorites. I easily pictured the creamy candlelit blush of Bella's skin against a blue blouse on our first dinner date. Then my mind strayed to the ecstatic rush I felt having Bella in my arms the first day I brought her to my bedroom. I flitted to the memory of folding her body into mine on our trip back from Italy. Remembering the way she took me back, so easily and so certainly, awed me and humbled me all at once. It also brought on pain and a wave of gut wrenching guilt. But I took a deep breath and caught myself. Instead, I thought of our first kiss, and all the hundreds of kisses since, remembering each one with perfect clarity.
I could still feel the burn of her lips on my earlobe from last night. Almost certainly Bella could never feel the intensity of emotion I felt for her. Her heart would burst. If I had a human heart it would be in a million pieces. As it was, I almost felt an ache in my own lifeless chest, and a low groan escaped from my throat.
I noticed Emmett finishing up with his prey, wiping his mouth and hands on his shirt, politely ignoring my groan. He turned to bound over to where I was sitting. I quickly held my head in my hands. Luckily Emmett couldn't read my thoughts like I could read his. The ridicule would have been never-ending. But I was sure my face would give me away, and I kept it hidden.
Emmett was still regaling in our family's recent battle with an army of newborn vampires. He had been replaying it for the past week with whoever would listen. Of course, since I could hear his thoughts, I had heard more about it than anyone else in my family. Emmett was the strongest, most physical vampire I had ever met, and it was hard on him never being able to completely flex his muscle. Our short battle was the most action that he had ever seen. His ebullience was clearly apparent as he sprinted over and playfully punched my arm.
"Hey thanks for saving us from wedding planning, big brother," Emmett thought, grinning. "Alice even managed to rope Rose into it this morning." Alice was an event- planning force to be reckoned with. Only she could get Rose to help with our wedding. Then I smiled involuntarily at the phrase 'our wedding'.
"But I'm surprised you were able to tear yourself away from Bella today," Emmett continued silently, "now that you're practically married . . . I don't know man, I couldn't keep my hands off Rose when we were first together."
There was no need for Emmett to remind me. He and Rosalie were like a demolition crew with their newfound love, knocking down walls, breaking furniture. Carlisle and Esme had to send them away for a few years to save our furniture and our sanity. Even now, it was hard to keep out of Emmett and Rosalie's thoughts enough to give them the privacy they deserved.
"You know it can't be like that with me and Bella," I reminded him out loud.
"Leave it to you Edward to fall for a human. I couldn't hold out like you man. It's a good thing it was you, I guess."
I lifted my head from my hands to look at Emmett and my expression clearly conveyed that while this was a good thing (a gross understatement), there was also an element of torture intertwined.
"Ha!" Emmett laughed out loud almost with glee. "And here I think of you as the monastic picture of restraint. You want Bella more than you let on big brother. Is she keeping you in check?"
My words came out before I could think, "I want her more than I've ever wanted anything. More than I thirst for her, if it's possible. And Emmett, she wants me too. It's almost more than I can bear to draw the line like I do again and again each night. I want her so much that I've agreed to the impossible."
"The impossible?"
"She wants a real honeymoon Emmett. Before she's been turned. I don't know if I can do it."
Emmett was laughing again. "I was wondering what was up with the quickie nuptials. I'm never going to let my little sister live this one down!"
"Emmett, I would appreciate it if you would never bring this up to Bella. It's not quite proper for me to even talk with you about this."
"Sure, I'll be proper, until the wedding. When she's a happily married woman, the gloves are off. I should have guessed though. I kind of remember from when I was a human teenager. I couldn't think about anything else. You must remember a little how it felt."
"No Emmett, I've never felt about anyone the way I feel for Bella."
"Well yeah, when you're a vampire it's completely different. But I mean physically, when you were human."
"No Emmett, I've never been with anyone while human or . . . otherwise."
"At all?"
I pressed my lips together and attempted my best menacing glare.
Emmett wasn't laughing now, just grinning. Maybe I hadn't completely lost my touch. "Well if you ever want any pointers bro... But the way Bella looks at you, it seems you may be a natural. Anyway, you always worry too much, and you've got weeks to work out the details."
"Bella thinks we should start working the details out now. She thinks it maybe too much for me all at once," I confessed quickly and under my breath, more to confirm the situation for myself than to unload further on my brother.
"I've got to hand it to Bella, she's sneaky. But she's got a point. You have no idea what you're in for. After all these years you could really blow a gasket or something." Emmett wasn't helping Bella's case and I was ready to end this conversation.
But he continued, "The only thing I can compare it to is when you taste human blood. It's really close to feeling that good. Suddenly you're warm, you feel dizzy and so strong, charged. I don't know; I'm not good with words."
I realized that I had been so judicious at screening out Emmett's sex life that I didn't know anything about the details, while human or afterward. "Emmett, would you mind telling me more about when you were human, about this part of being human in particular? Maybe it could help me to better understand Bella's feelings."
Emmett went in for a punch, and seeing exactly what was coming for me, I easily dodged out of the way. "I said I had sex, I didn't say I used to be a girl."
"Emmett, please. Humor me."
"Well, OK. It's not really clear anymore, you know, it's pretty foggy. But I'll tell you what I can remember."
"There was this girl LeAnna. I was the captain of the football team, and she was the head cheerleader. For just about everybody at school there was no question we would end up together. She had this thick brown hair that hung down her back and always curled at the ends. And these really pretty eyes that changed from gray to green depending on the weather"
Emmett's eyes lost their focus and clouded over, and he sat down next to me as he continued, "After I graduated from high school, I started working full time at the garage were my dad worked. He was a mechanic. There wasn't much work, with the depression, but I'd bring an extra dollar or two home each week, and it helped. LeAnna's family was sending her to college in Charleston. Her daddy was one of the owners of the zinc mine in town. Made a lot of money during the war. We talked and talked about how I would make my way to Charleston, find a job in a fancy garage and finally put a ring on her finger."
"Just about then her daddy dropped off his car at our garage. A big green 1933 Plymouth DeLux. The problem was, we needed to order parts for something so fancy, and so it stayed there for a few weeks. LeAnna came to visit me one day as I was closing up the shop, and that's when we started fumbling around in the back seat of her daddy's car. I just remember the way her skin felt so soft, and the sound of her panting in my ear. We ended up crumpled, tired and sweaty each night, and I woke up each morning wanting more. The day the part came in, we knew we were about to lose our chance, so that night we were on a mission. It was sweet and way too quick and well, I remember it took my breath away. And it's all we thought about, and what we did every chance we got until she left for Charleston later that month. I saw her again at Christmastime, but she was different, seemed more used to city life. The idea of climbing into the backseat of a car with a mechanic seemed to embarrass her suddenly. She went back to school and I never saw her again."
"There were other girls after that. I don't remember them much at all. I was kind of lost after LeAnna left. Drank a lot, lost the job with my dad. There wasn't any money at home. We hunted a lot to put food on the table."
I knew where this story was going, all of Emmett's stories either started or ended with the bear. But I let him finish, even though I'd heard it many times. It was true for everyone really; all stories inevitably start or end with birth and death.
"I was wasted in the woods that day when I saw the bear. I just stood there. By the time I remembered I had a gun I couldn't use it right, then fumbled and dropped it on my toe. I remember thinking it hurt so damn much to drop the gun on my toe, right before the bear started tearing me up."
"I should have been dead, but then I woke up. I opened my eyes and there was Rose. So beautiful, the most amazing thing I've ever seen with her gold hair, her bright gold eyes. My angel, she made it all better."
"Anyway dude, let me tell you, while I would have traded almost anything to be with LeAnna one more time that winter, now I have more sensation in my little finger than I think I had in my whole body back then, It doesn't compare. And compared with what I remember a human kid being able to do, dude you are going to blow Bella's mind."
"Thank you, Emmett."
Emmett grinned, his naturally jovial countenance winning out over the sincerity of his story. "You know, for a vampire that loves baseball as much as you do, it's kind of funny that you've never even made it to second base." With that he went in for a quick jab, but reading his intentions, I was able to duck and quickly tackle him from an unsuspected angle. A thunderous series of cracks echoed through the forest as our bodies collided and then tumbled down the rocky slope from our perch. I wrestled with more intensity than usual, a bit more intent on besting Emmett this afternoon. He fought back, always happy to exercise his formidable muscle.
We both looked up as Jasper came into view on the horizon. "Wait until Jazz hears about this."
I shot him a warning glance, "At least not in my presence Emmett."
"Sure bro."
Jasper jogged up to us. "I just got a call from Alice. She needs Emmett and me for some wedding stuff after all. Something you're not supposed to know about, Edward."
"Fat chance of that ever happening," Emmett thought.
"Emmett, she said she needs us back soon. We should go, she sounded pretty stressed." Only Alice could get this flustered with perfecting the details for a small family wedding - something I was deeply grateful for. I would have to find a way to thank Alice for this. And I started playing her recent thoughts back in my head, looking for one thing that would make her happier than anything else.
We made our way to Emmett's Jeep, and he spun out onto the highway, back towards Forks. Jasper's mind was only on Alice, clearly anxious about the panic he heard in her voice. Emmett on the other hand surprised me, his thoughts taking a much more contemplative path than usual.
"Carlisle is always talking about how our morality makes us more bonded together. By how consciously deciding to not kill humans, we form more of a human loving bond and stuff. But maybe it's because without fulfilling our basic desire, we focus on the next best thing. So we bond and love more fiercely than the others because it's all we have. And it's amazing, but it's not the same. Is love and sex just a substitute? If it is just a substitute, is that somehow wrong? And Edward's been going so long without killing humans or love or sex either, how did the guy go on? His world is about to be rocked."
Emmett's thoughts suddenly stopped and he looked over at me next to him in the front seat of the Jeep. "Hey sorry, didn't mean to talk about you right in front of you like that."
"No Emmett, you really have given me a lot to consider." And I spent the rest of the ride back to Forks doing just that, considering.
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Prelude