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Polar Night	By : belladonnacullen Category: Twilight Series > AU/AR > Het > Het Views: 8234 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or make any money from this story.

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It took less than a second to hang up on my father and walk across the threshold, my need for Bella growing with every step. My impulse was to run to her and take her in my arms, all wet, warm, and fragrant. But then what? Then what?

I froze next to the bed in the white room; pillows ripped open, sheets torn, the room covered in a layer of down. How could I stop myself without hurting Bella’s feelings all over again? How could I stop myself, period? If I were honest with myself, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted Bella naked, in my arms; I wanted myself deep inside of her. I wanted to feel that fire, I wanted her to scream for me, over and over. And the mere thought had my teeth tingling, had my erection straining.

I forced myself to sit on the bed, sending a cloud of feathers into the air. No. It was too dangerous. We were lucky this time. There was no telling what I would do to her.

I should talk to Bella, just talk, like Carlisle suggested. But what should I say? Everything I’d said up until this point had been wrong. With every word I’d made the situation worse. But perhaps if I could just tell her what last night meant to me. How much I wanted her. How my body hummed when I was next to her, how the connection between her and I was now palpable, how her every movement drew me in, how her every breath was like an invitation to take her again. And how I couldn’t risk losing her, because she was like air or water to a human, suddenly I needed her to survive.

My love for Bella was like a gentle breeze compared to the way I fiercely needed to be with her now. After Carlisle married Esme I’d rolled my eyes when he quit his job at the hospital to spend night and day by her side. I’d done worse with Rose and Emmett; I sneered and I’d asked them to leave. But I didn’t know, I couldn’t have imagined a feeling, a need, this strong, stronger than myself. Would Bella understand this? Would this frighten her? The intensity of what I felt last night frightened me, until now I had no idea what to do with myself, or with Bella.

How could I explain that there was no way I could risk her life, that after everything, after having faith in myself, after trusting myself, there was still the same dangerous creature beneath it all? The same base monster that would bite her and crush her, and destroy everything he loved.

Minutes passed, stretching like years. The moon rose over the horizon, casting gray shadows about the white room. I heard Bella move from the bathroom to the bedroom, the door clicking behind her. I hadn’t reached any conclusions. I hadn’t found a formula that I thought would work. But I couldn’t stay away from my wife any longer.

*****

I stopped outside of the bedroom door, steeling myself to continue, preparing to walk the tightrope of explaining to Bella how much I wanted her without giving into my baser desires. I listened to her heart beating quickly, her breath deep and unsteady. It sounded like she was sitting on the bed. On the bed. Suddenly, in my mind, Bella was underneath me on that bed. I saw the blue satin sheets slipping along her skin, sliding over her nipples, under her backside, bringing out the rosy undertone to her skin, as I ran my tongue along every inch of her.

I hesitated, then knocked. “Bella.”

For a moment, her heart stopped. I heard her shift on the bed, but she didn’t answer.

“Bella?”

“I’m going to sleep, Edward. You don’t have to worry. You’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain; you kept your word. I’ll wait. You’ve made the choice for me. That was the last thing I needed as a human. Now I’m done with it.”

“What?” I hadn’t expected that at all. “Bella, please, can I come in?”

“Why?”

Why indeed? Because I wanted to make it better. Because I couldn’t stand hurting her anymore. Because staying away caused an ache unlike anything I’d felt before, worse than when I left her, worse than when I thought she was dead. Because I was selfish.

“Yeah, I don’t know why you’d want to come in either. You might have to look at me, at my skin. I might try to touch you.”

“Bella, please.” Her breaths were coming harder, muffled. Was she crying?

“I don’t get it, Edward. Please, please tell me why you’re doing this. Tell me something that makes sense. Not just that I have bruises. Tell me how you can smile and pretend that this isn’t bad. Tell me that this isn’t what you wanted. Tell me that this hurts you, and then tell me why you’re doing it. Because I don’t get it. I don’t get how you can act like this. Is it because you’re a vampire, so you can just turn it off? Is that it? You can wake up and be a different person. Is that what being with you is going to be like? Is that what I’ll be like?”

“It’s because I don’t want to hurt you, because I can’t trust myself not to hurt you.”

“This hurts worse.”

“Let me make it better.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Let me try to find a way.”

“Please, go away, Edward. Let me sleep. Let me think.”

“But --”

“You’ve made all the decisions, set all the boundaries. Even now, now that we’re supposed to be married! For once I’m making a decision in this relationship. Please, Edward, go away.”

“Bella.”

“Please.” Her voice was strained, high-pitched. She was crying.

“Bella.”

“Don’t knock the door down. Don’t come through the window or the wall. It’s not fair that you get to decide how much of me you get. If I have to wait until I’m changed, fine. But don’t come in here and kiss me and hold me, and then tell me that’s all you want. I can’t do that anymore Edward. It’s not fair.”

“Bella.”

“Go away.”

I couldn’t. I stayed rooted to the spot, my forehead leaning against the door. My body attuned to every minute sound, every scent from behind the door. I could smell Bella’s tears; I listened as a pen scratched against paper, as she breathed deeply, unevenly. She wanted me to leave. She wanted me to leave.

I took the door off the hinges over a hundred times in my mind. I took her in my arms, pulled off her clothing and made love to her like she wanted. She was in my arms, finally happy, finally fulfilled. She moaned and shouted my name. She had no bruises; I could love her without hurting her. But instead, I stood vampire still against the door. I was a monster, a danger to my wife, the person that was making her miserable. Bella’s breathing slowed, I heard her settle into the bed.

In my mind she came to me and opened the door. She was wearing just my shirt, naked beneath it, like she had been six nights ago now. I took her in my arms, pushed her against the wall, and I pushed myself inside of her, my mouth on her breasts, her hands pulling at my hair. “Harder,” I growled in my dream.

But instead I stood vampire still against the door with an aching erection. Bella’s breathing was steady and even, with the hint of a snore. She was asleep.

I couldn’t stay away. I pried the door from its hinges, laid it against the wall, careful not to make noise or splinter the wood. Bella was sprawled across the bed, her cheeks stained with tears, her hair damp and tangled around her face. I made a small, involuntary noise. She was wearing the tattered T-shirt that she wore that night. The first night I laid next to her in her bed. The first night we really talked. That night I told her more about myself than I ever thought I could tell another person. That night she slept and I stayed.

“When you said ‘You are my life now,’ that changed everything for me.
“I meant it.”
“I know.”

It was like another lifetime when we sat in the meadow and talked about that first night. It was hard to believe it was just a week ago. One week. I hadn’t dreamed she could mean more to me than she did then.

Why was this so hard? I loved Bella more than anything, and she wanted me more than her life. This should be easy.

I circled around the bed, drawing closer to Bella. Her scent pulled me in and her warmth was like a fire, thawing the surface of my skin. The bruise on her cheek was a dusky purple, her neck was red and swollen where it met the collar of her shirt, and I could spot the edge of a bruise peeking out from her sleeve. To see her battered and bruised, to see what I’d done, the pain was almost too much to take.

I knelt at her side, and laid my hand as gently as a whisper against the bruise on her cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Bella. I can’t love you like I want to. Like you deserve.” I placed my hand on her neck. It looked as though I’d tried to strangle her. Flashes of long buried memories shot through my mind. A woman in Byztherczebana, struggling for air, her neck purple and black. Her husband was dead at her side, a look of fear frozen in his eyes, a smear of blood on the wood floor. A red-eyed monster licked his lips before stalking off into the night.

“I’m sorry Bella. I thought I was better than this. I’d hoped. I thought, maybe, as long as I had faith in us. I just hoped.”

Without me by her side, the warm air had Bella’s skin burning and covered in sweat. I gingerly wound myself around her, resting my hand over the shoulder that I’d noticed was swollen and discolored this morning. How could I have done this? How could I destroy what I loved?

My eyes still ached, my arms still ached, and my stomach felt like it was full of stones. But I was better next to Bella. I’d stay here until she woke. She’d never know. She was right. It wasn’t fair to her. And it was wrong for me to be here now. But I couldn’t leave. Didn’t she know that?

Lying there with Bella, my fantasies changed. We talked on the beach, we walked hand in hand and she smiled up at me, the sunlight dancing in her eyes. She hugged me as I made her breakfast. Little things, the things that hadn’t happened today. My mind drifted back to Forks. I saw Bella’s clothing in my closet at home, I saw us in my room reading books, watching her as she brushed her teeth in my bathroom, sitting at the edge of the river behind the house. I’d do whatever I had to, to get us there, without hurting Bella. Without killing her.

*****

Bella shifted in her sleep, her eyelids fluttered. I was on my feet, by the door.

“Edward?” Her voice was thick and slurred. Was she talking in her sleep?

“Edward?”

I didn’t know whether I should reply. Would she be angry that I was here? I saw her eyelids struggle to open, her eyes straining in the dark room. “Edward?”

“Yes?”

“Were you just here, with me?” It almost sounded as if she hoped I was.

“I still am. Bella, I’m so --”

“Touch me again?”

“What?”

“Like you were just now. Where I’m sore.”

“What?”

“Where it hurts a little. Your skin, the cold, it makes it better.”

“Show me where it hurts,” I murmured. Bella rubbed her shoulder, then ran her hands along her ribs. I was at her side in an instant, my top on the floor so that I could press my torso against her ribs while I rested my cheek against her shoulder. Bella sighed.

“Bella, we need to talk.”

“Mm hmm,” she mumbled, still half asleep.

“Please, tell me, honestly, how much it hurts. Don’t hold back for me.” Bella opened her eyes and turned to look at me warily.

“Like I was lifting weights, or working out really hard.” Her voice was hushed. “My muscles feel achy and my joints feel loose, kind of. And the black and blue marks are sore to the touch. Tender, kind of.” Then she reached to grab my hand, and looked me in the eye. Her touch was like fire, like life itself. “But it didn’t hurt last night, Edward. I said I’d tell you. I would have.”

I nodded. It was a relief. It felt good to hear the truth. I should have listened earlier.

“Now, you, Edward. Tell me where you hurt, honestly. Tell me why.”

“I’ve been in pain all day, Bella. It actually hurts to stay away from you. I didn’t expect that.”

Bella narrowed her eyes. “That’s weird, but that’s not what I meant.”

“I know. It’s hard to put into words. It’s hard to talk to someone about this after being a solitary creature for so long. My family has been paired off for over seventy years. They each tend to confide in their mates. I haven’t had that. I’m not good at this.”

Bella sighed.

“I’m sorry. It’s not an excuse.” I reached my hand out tentatively to stroke Bella’s hair. My fingertips burned, hot as embers.

“I love you so much, Bella. I thought, I hoped, that I’d changed. But last night was worse than I could have imagined.”

“What? You’re going to start this again!” Bella was immediately awake, sitting up, pushing my hand away.

“No, please. Let me start over. Please, I’m trying so hard, Bella.”

I reached for her hand again, but Bella’s eyes flashed and I drew it away.

“The things you’ve made me feel, I thought it was long gone. And I never, ever felt this way for another creature. I didn’t think I could. Everything changed, physically changed, the more I loved you. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve hungered for your blood? How I don’t want you like that, at all? How your scent calms the monster in me? I’d hoped that meant that I could love you. But I can’t Bella. That creature is still inside of me, ready to hurt you.”

“Edward, you are that creature.”

I flinched. It hurt to hear that from her lips so matter-of-factly.

Bella looked equal parts exasperated and impatient. “Edward, I love you. I love you more now that I saw that side of you. I love that I know what you are really like. Do you realize that you’ve been hunting like a million times, since we’ve been together?”

“Fifty-two, if you don’t count the months we spent apart,” I corrected.

Bella rolled her eyes. “Right. Anyway, that’s a big part of you I’ve never gotten to see.”

“I told you, it’s too dangerous.”

“No, Edward, last night I saw you. You were right there with me, in the same bed as me, inside of me. And it was the most wonderful, intimate, amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. I don’t want a pretend human. I love all the human parts about you. But I love all of you.”

“Bella, I could have killed you.”

“How?”

I was speechless. What did she mean, how? How not? That would be a much smaller list.

“Tell me what you wanted to do. Please.”

I looked away. I couldn’t say.

“Edward,” Bella murmured, stroking my arm. I fought the impulse to jump from the bed and leave the room. “Please, talk to me.”

“I wanted to bite you,” I admitted, my head in my hands.

“To feed? I thought you said you didn’t…”

I shook my head.

“Then what?”

When did talking become so painful? “Bella, I can’t.”

“Edward. Everything you did last night, I wanted, but I didn’t even know it. I wanted you to growl, I wanted you to hold me like that, to pull me against you. I even wanted shredded sheets. I wanted you to say mine, over and over and over.”

I closed my eyes. “When I came, I wanted to bite you, for pleasure,” I nearly whispered.

“Pleasure?”

“To mark you. As mine.”

“Oh… Really? Wow. That would feel good?”

“I can only imagine,” I managed, quietly. But the monster within me shouted yes, shook me, commanded me to press her into the mattress and taker her right there. I clenched my jaw and balled my hands into tight fists.

“That’s it?” Bella asked.

“That’s it? That’s it!” Had she heard what I’d just confessed? “I lost control, Bella. All of the control you and I worked to master, it all went out the window. I couldn’t pay attention to how I should touch you, to any of the things I should have been concentrating on. And look at you! I’ve killed men that did similar things.”

“If you killed the men that did that to their wives, then you killed the wrong men.”

“They were all the wrong men, Bella. My greatest fear, after everything I did to myself those dark years, after throwing away my humanity, was that I’d incorporated the darkness of those monsters into myself. After so many years, I’d hoped I’d escaped that. After you, well, I was sure I was somehow better. But I’m not, Bella. I’m a vampire and a monster of a man, all rolled into one.”

“Stop saying that, Edward. Why are we right back to square one? I thought you’d put this behind you. You are perfect. You’re not a human, but you’re not a monster. I love you. I love you more because you left Carlisle and his lifestyle, and then found a reason and the strength to stop. Because you’ve been trying to make up for it ever since.

“Edward, if I’ve understood everything you’ve said over the years, you could have turned me into dust last night. You let go, and I have bruises. Bruises! You let go, and you didn’t bite me. You may have wanted to, but you didn’t.”

I didn’t say anything. She may only have been bruised, but I wanted to throw her on the floor and pound myself into her until she dug her nails into my back and screamed my name. That would cause more than bruise.

“So, was it was so hard to restrain yourself, then, so difficult, that you don’t want to have sex with me again?”

“No! Bella, don’t you see? I can’t risk hurting you, but it’s near impossible to keep myself from you, now that… you’re mine.”

I saw Bella’s eyes light up. For the first time since she woke this morning, there was a glimmer of happiness in her voice. What had I said?

“You’re mine,” I tried again, looking deep into Bella’s ebony eyes. She smiled and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Her eyes welled with tears.

“Don’t cry,” I murmured, wiping a teardrop from the corner of her eye. I resisted the impulse to taste it on my fingertip.

“It means something more now, doesn’t it? Like with Rosalie and Emmett,” Bella asked, leaning her head into my palm. I gently rubbed her cheek, concentrating very intently on keeping my hand on her face, not letting it trail over her breast, not holding her hip, not letting it slip under the waistband of her sleep shorts… Wait, what had she asked?

“Rosalie and Emmett?” What did they have to do with this?

“What we were talking about earlier. Rose was the only one that could talk sense into Emmett. Because she was his mate.”

“What do you mean, Bella?”

Bella looked at her hands, winding themselves through the blue satin sheets. “I don’t know, Edward. I feel attached to you, or something, in a good way. Maybe it’s just that we had sex, but it feels like something more. I thought I saw your eyes when it happened. I thought maybe you knew it too.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing a very poor job of explaining to you. For a vampire to consummate his relationship with his love, it’s a very powerful thing. Everyone told me: Carlisle, my brothers. But I didn’t understand, I couldn’t have, Bella. I didn’t think you could mean more to me than you did. But now you’re everything, you’re so much more. I can’t hurt you. I can’t stay away from you. I want you so much that it hurts.”

Bella looked up from her lap and grasped my hand. “Then take me,” she whispered.

I groaned and gently pulled my hand away. “Please, Bella, I can’t. ”

“Then you know. You know how much it hurts me to hear you won’t touch me. How much it hurts to go take a shower alone. How much it hurts that I don’t know if I should touch you.”

“I didn’t know how you felt.”

“Edward, you didn’t listen. I want you and I to spend forever together, naked. And when that’s over, I want to do it again.” With those words, my mind wandered into dangerous territory and I struggled to bring it back to the present. I focused on Bella, her heart-shaped face, her slender frame under the T-shirt. I could see by the outline of her breasts that she wasn’t wearing a bra. I pressed my eyelids shut in an effort to compose myself.

“I’m so sorry to have hurt you. To have ruined your morning, our first day together.” I glanced up to see how she took my apology.

Bella rolled her eyes. “You didn’t ruin the whole day. Just when I woke up, and my shower, and breakfast,” she smiled mischievously.

We both gazed at each other, smiling, aching, and the room was lit with the force of our love, it brought us together even though we weren’t touching. Bella put out her hand to stroke my face, but pulled it away. “Sorry.”

“How can I make it up to you?”

“Say mine, like you mean it. Like last night,” she offered.

I very carefully bent my head to Bella’s ear and growled. “Mine.”

And sure enough, I could tell that she liked it almost immediately.

“Edward, I don’t mind if you stay with me tonight. Just stay. Tell me what it will be like for me to be yours forever.”

Bella laid down shyly, awkwardly, scared to reach for me, unsure of herself. It reminded me so much of that first night we spent in her bed that I nearly chuckled. I pressed myself against her, before pulling her flush against me, her back to my chest, something I never would have done that night.

“I love that you wore this tonight, Bella,” I whispered, rubbing my fingers along the seam of the worn cotton T-shirt.

“I love that you packed it,” she replied, snuggling closer.

“Don’t you know that I don’t need to see you in lingerie to want you, to think you’re the most desirable thing in the universe? I couldn’t care less what Alice packed, as long as you’re in it.”

Bella sighed and I could feel her body relax against mine. “I remembered your request. From the other night,” she rasped.

A growl escaped from my throat. Bella giggled. I pressed myself against Bella’s backside. “Don’t ever think I don’t want you, Bella. I want you more than you know.”

And somehow, despite all of my missteps, Bella and I managed to talk until the sun grew light with dawn, when she fell asleep in my arms.

*****
A/N: Thanks so much Luthien, TheBlindQueen, LadyExcaliber and Gaps of Misery for faithfully reviewing. m
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Polar Night