Sexy Shell's blog: "Stories"

“Are you all right?” I asked tenderly, reaching out slowly, carefully, to place my hand back in hers.  She looked at my hand, and then at my eyes, then back to my hand.  She continued tracing the lines in my hand with her fingertip.  She looked up at me and smiled timidly, and I smiled back.

“So where were we, before I behaved so rudely?” I asked.  “Honestly I can’t remember.” She said shyly.  I smiled with a shamed look on my face.  “I think we were talking about why you were afraid, besides the obvious reason.”  “Oh, right.”  She said.  “Well?” I quipped.

She looked down at my hand and doodled aimlessly across my palm.  The seconds ticked by.  “How easily frustrated I am,” I sighed.

She gazed into my eyes.  “I was afraid…because, for, well, obvious reasons, I can’t stay with you.  And I’m afraid that I’d like to stay with you, much more than I should.”  She looked down at my hands as she spoke.  It seemed difficult for her to say this out loud.

“Yes,” I agreed slowly.  “That is something to be afraid of, indeed.  Wanting to be with me.  That’s not really in your best interest.”  She frowned.  “I should have left a long time ago,” I sighed.  “I should leave now.  But I don’t know if I can.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” she mumbled, staring down.  “This is exactly why I should.  But don’t worry; I’m essentially a selfish creature.  I crave your company too much to do what I know I should.”

“I’m glad.” She replied.  “Don’t be!” I said withdrawing my hand, more gently this time; my voice was harsher than usual.

“It’s not your company I crave!  Never forget that.  Never forget that I am more dangerous to you than I am to anyone else.” I stopped, and gazed unseeingly into the forest.

“I don’t think I understand exactly what you mean… by the last part anyways,” she said.  I looked back at her and smiled, my mood shifting again.

“How do I explain?” I mused.  “And without frightening you again…hmmmm.”  Without thinking about it, I placed my hand back in hers; she held it tightly in both or hers. 

I looked at our hands.  “That’s amazingly pleasant, the warmth.” I sighed.  A moment passed as I assembled my thoughts.  “You know how everyone enjoys different flavors?” I began.  “Some people love chocolate ice cream, while other prefer strawberry?” She nodded.  “Sorry about the bad food analogy…I couldn’t think of another way to explain.”

She smiled, and I smiled ruefully back.  “You see every person smells different, has a different essence.  If you locked an alcoholic in a room full of stale beer, he’d gladly drink it.  But he could resist, if he wished to, if he were a recovering alcoholic.  Now let’s say you placed in that room a glass of hundred-year-old brandy, the rarest, finest cognac…and filled the room with it’s warm aroma…how do you think he would fare then?”

We sat silently, looking into each other’s eyes…trying to read each other’s thoughts.  I broke the silence first.  “Maybe that’s not the right comparison.  Maybe it would be easy to turn the brandy down.  Perhaps I should have made our alcoholic a heroin addict instead.” 

“So what you are saying is, I’m your brand of heroin?” she teased, trying to lighten the mood.  I smiled swiftly, appreciating her efforts.  “Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.” “Does that happen often?” she asked.

I looked across the tree tops, thinking through my response.  “I spoke to my brothers about it.” I said still staring off into the distance.  “To Jasper, every one of you is the same.  He’s the most recent to join our family.  It’s a struggle for him to abstain at all.  He hasn’t had the time to grow sensitive to the differences in smell, in flavor.”  I glanced swiftly at her, my expression apologetic.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I don’t mind.  Please don’t worry about offending me, or frightening me.  That’s the way you think.  I can understand, or at least try to.” She replied.

I took a deep breath and gazed at the sky again.  “So Jasper wasn’t sure if he’d ever come across someone who was as…” I hesitated, looking for the right word…”Appealing as you are to me.  This makes me think not.  Emmett has been on the wagon longer, so to speak, and he understood what I meant.  He says twice, for him, one stronger than the other.”  “And for you?” she asked.  “Never.”

The word hung there for a moment in the warm breeze.  “What did Emmett do?” she asked to break the silence.  I was silent, and I clenched my hand into a fist inside hers.  I looked away.  She waited silently, but I wasn’t going to answer.

“I guess I know,” she finally said.  I lifted my eyes; my expression was wistful, pleading.  “Even the strongest of us fall of the wagon, don’t we?”  I asked.  “What are you asking me? For my permission?”  Her voice was sharp.  “I mean, is there no hope, then?” she said calmly.

“No, no!”  I said firmly.  “Of course there’s hope! I mean, of course I won’t…”  I left the sentence hanging.  My eyes burned into hers.  “It’s different for us.  Emmett…these were strangers he happened across.  It was a long time ago, and he wasn’t as… practiced, as careful, as he is now.”

I fell silent and watched her intently as she thought it through.  “So if we’d met…oh, in a dark alley or something…” she trailed off.  “It took everything I had not to jump up in the middle of biology in front of all those people and…”  I stopped abruptly, looking away.  “When you walked past me, I could have ruined everything Carlisle has built for us, right then and there.  If I hadn’t been denying my thirst for the last, well, too many years, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.” I paused, scowling at the trees.

I glanced at her grimly, both of us remembering.  “You must have thought I was possessed.” I said.  “I couldn’t understand why.  How you could hate me so quickly…” she replied.  “To me it was like you were some sort of demon, summon straight from my own personal hell to ruin me.  The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it would make me deranged that first day.  In that one hour, I thought of a hundred ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you alone.  And I fought each one of them back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them.  I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow…”

I looked up then at her staggered expression as she tried to absorb my bitter memories.  “You would have come,” I promised.  She tried to speak calmly.  “Without a doubt.”

I frowned down at her hands, releasing her from my forced stare.  “And then I tried to rearrange my schedule in a pointless attempt to avoid you, you were there…in that close, warm little room, the scent was maddening.  I nearly took you then.  There was only one other frail human there…so easily dealt with.”

“But I resisted.  I don’t know how.  I forced myself not to wait for you, not to follow you from the school.  It was easier outside, when I couldn’t smell you anymore, to think clearly, to make the right decision.  I left the others near home…I was too ashamed to tell them how weak I was, they only knew something was wrong…and then I went straight to Carlisle, at the hospital, to tell him I was leaving.”  She stared in surprise.

“I traded cars with him…he had a full tank of gas and I didn’t want to stop.  I didn’t dare go home, to face Esme.  She wouldn’t have let me go without a scene.  She would’ve tried to convince me that it wasn’t necessary…”  “By the next morning I was in Alaska.” I said ashamed.  I spent two days there, with some old acquaintances…but I was homesick.  I hated knowing I upset Esme, and the rest of them, my adopted family.  In the pure air of the mountains it was hard to believe you were so irresistible.  I convinced myself that it was weak to run away.  I’d dealt with temptation before, not of this magnitude, not even close, but I was strong.  Who were you, an insignificant little girl” I grinned suddenly.  “To chase me from the place I wanted to be?  So I came back…” I stared off into space.

“I took precautions, hunting, feeding more than usual before seeing you again.  I was sure that I was strong enough to treat you like any other human.  I was arrogant about it.”

“It was unquestionably a complication that I couldn’t simply read your thoughts to know what your reaction to me was.  I wasn’t used to having to go through such desperate measures, listening to your words through Jessica’s mind…her mind isn’t very original, and it was annoying to have to stoop to that.  And then I couldn’t know if you really meant what you said.  It was all extremely irritating.” I frowned at the memory.

“I wanted for you to forget my behavior that first day, if possible, so I tried to talk with you like I would any other person.  I was actually eager, hoping to decipher your thoughts.  But you were too interesting, I found myself caught up in your expressions…and every now and then you would stir the air with your hand or hair, and the scent would stun me again…”

“Of course, then you were nearly crushed before my very eyes.  Later I thought of a perfectly good excuse for why I acted at that moment…because if I hadn’t saved you, if your blood had been spilled there in front of me, I don’t think I could have stopped myself from exposing us for what we are.  But I only thought of that excuse later.  At the time, all I could think was, “not her.’”

I closed my eyes, lost in my agonizing confession to take her life.  Finally she spoke, but her voice was faint.  “In the hospital?”  My eyes flashed up to hers.  “I was appalled.  I couldn’t believe I had put us in danger after all, put myself in your power…you of all people.  As If I needed another motive to kill you.”  We both flinched as the word slipped out.  “But it had the opposite effect,” I continued quickly.  “I fought with Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper when they suggested that now was the time…the worst fight we had ever had.  Carlisle sided with me, and Alice.” I grimaced when I said her name.  “Esme told me to do whatever I had to in order to stay.”  I shook my head.

“All the next day I eavesdropped on the minds of anyone you spoke to, shocked that you had kept your word.  I didn’t understand you at all.  But I knew that I couldn’t become more involved with you.  I did my very best to stay as far from you as possible.  And every day the perfume of your skin, your breath, you hair…it hit me as hard as it did that first day.”  I met her eyes with a tender gaze.

“And for all that,” I continued.  “I’d fared better if I had exposed us all that first moment, than now here…with no witnesses and nothing to stop me…I were to hurt you.”

“Why?” she asked, such a human question.  “Isabella.” I pronounced her full name carefully, and then playfully ruffled her hair with my free hand.  “Bella, I couldn’t live with myself if I were to hurt you.  You don’t know how much it’s tortured me.”  I looked down ashamed again.  “The thought of you, still, white, cold…to never see you blush scarlet again, never to see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses…it would be unendurable.”  I lifted my eyes to hers.  “You are the most important thing to me now.  The most important thing to me ever.”

“Well you already know how I feel, of course,” she finally said.  “I’m here…which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you.”  She frowned.  “I’m an idiot.”

“You are an idiot,” I agreed with a laugh.  Our eyes met, and she laughed too.  We laughed together at the idiocy and sheer impossibility of such a moment.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…” I murmured.  She looked away from me, hiding her eyes.  “What a stupid lamb,” She sighed.  “What a masochistic lion.” I stared into the shadowy forest for a long moment.

“Why?” she began, and then paused, not quite sure how to continue.  I looked at her and smiled.  “Yes?” I asked.

“Tell me why you ran from me before.”  My smile faded. “You know why.”

“No, I mean, exactly what did I do wrong?  I’ll have to be on guard, you see, so I better start learning what I shouldn’t do.  This, for example” she stroked the back of my hand…”Seems to be alright.”

I smiled again. “Bella you didn’t do anything wrong.  It was my fault.”  “But I want to help, if I can, to not make this harder on you.”

“Well…” I contemplated for a moment.  “It was just how close you were.  Most humans instinctively shy away from us, are repelled by our alienness…I wasn’t expecting you to come close.  And the smell of your throat.”  I stopped short, looking to see if I upset her.

“Ok then,” she said fixing her hair so that her neck didn’t show.  “No throat exposure.”

I laughed.  “No, really, it was more the surprise than anything else.”  I raised my free hand and gently placed it on the side of her neck, she sat very still. 

“You see,” I said.  “Perfectly fine.”  “The blush on your cheeks is lovely,” I murmured, and gently freed my other hand.  Her hands fell limply to her lap.  Softly I brushed her cheek, and then held her face between my hands.

“Be very still,” I whispered.  Slowly never moving my eyes from hers, I leaned towards her.  Then abruptly, but very gently, I rested my cold cheek against the hollow of her throat.  With deliberate slowness, I slide my hands down the sides of her neck.  She shivered and I breathed in deeply.  My hands did not pause and softly I moved to her shoulder, and then stopped.

I drifted my face to the side, my nose skimming across her collarbone.  I came to rest on her chest with the side of my face.  “Ah,” I sighed.

I few minutes passed and I released her.  "It won’t be so hard again,” I said with satisfaction.  “Was that very hard for you?” she asked.  “Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  And you?”   “No, it wasn’t bad…for me.”

I smiled at her inflection.  “You know what I mean.” I smiled.  “Here” I took her hand and placed it against my cheek.  “Do you feel how warm it is?”

“Don’t move.” She whispered.  I closed my eyes and became as immobile as stone.  She caressed my cheek, delicately stroked my eyelids.  She traced the shape of my nose, and then, so carefully, my lips.  I parted my lips under her hand, and she could feel my breath on her fingertips.  She dropped her hand and leaned away.

I opened my eyes, wanting her in a way that I never imagined.  “I wish,” I whispered, “I wish you could feel the…complexity…the confusion…I feel.  That you could understand.”   “Tell me,” She breathed.  “I don’t think I can.  I’ve told you, on the one hand, the hunger…the thirst…that, deplorable creature I am, I feel for you.  I think you can understand that to an extent.  Though” I half smiled…”As you are not addicted to any illegal substances, you probably can’t empathize completely.”

“But…” I touched her lips lightly.  “There are other hungers.  Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.”

“I may understand that better then you think.”

“I’m not used to feeling so human.  Is it always like this?”

“For me?” She paused.  “No. never.  Never before this.”

“I don’t know how to be close with you,” I admitted.  “I don’t know if I even can.”

She leaned forward slowly, cautioning me with her eyes.  She placed her cheek on my chest.  “This is enough,” She sighed.  I put my arms around her and pressed my face against her hair.

“You’re better at this than you give yourself credit for,” she commented.

“I have human instincts…they may be buried deep, but they are there.”  We sat like that for a long moment.  The light was fading, and shadows were beginning to hit the forest, she sighed. 

“You have to go.” I said.  “I thought you couldn’t read my mind.”  “It’s, getting clearer.” I said smiling.

I took her shoulders and looked into her face.  “Can I show you something?” I asked, suddenly excited.  “Show me what?” she replied.

“I want to show you how I travel through the forest.”  I saw her expression.  “Don’t worry you’ll be extremely safe, and we’ll get to your truck a lot faster.”  I smiled my crooked smile.

“Will you turn into a bat?” she asked.  I laughed real loud.  “Like I haven’t heard that before!”  “Right, I’m sure you get that all the time.”  “Come on, little coward, climb on my back.”

She waited to see if I was joking, but realized I meant it.  I smiled at her hesitation, and reached for her.  I slung her on my back, with very little effort; she clamped her legs around me tightly.

“I’m a bit heavier than your average backpack,” she warned.  “Ha!” I snorted.

I grabbed her hand, and pressed her palm to me face, and inhaled deeply.  “Easier all the time,” I muttered.  Then I started running.

I streaked through the dark, thick underbrush of the forest like a bullet.  There was no sound of my feet ever touching the ground.  My breathing never changed, and never indicated any effort.

Within minutes it was over, and we were back at her truck.  I pried her legs and arms from my body and set her gently on her feet.  “Exhilarating, isn’t it?” I asked my voice high, with excitement.

I stood motionless waiting for her to speak.  “Bella?” I asked, anxious now.  “I think I need to lie down,” she gasped. “Oh, sorry.” I said and gently helped her to the ground.

She laid there quietly for a few moments.  “How do you feel?” I asked.  “Dizzy, I think”  “Put your head between your knees.” I said to her.

She did it immediately, and took a few deep breaths.  A few moments passed by and finally she lifted her head.  “I guess that wasn’t such a great idea,” I mused.  “No, it was very interesting.” She said with a weak voice.

“Ha-ha, you’re as white as a ghost…no you’re as white as me!” I said.  “I think I should have closed my eyes.” She said quickly.  “Remember that next time” I replied.  “Next time!” she groaned.

I laughed, my mood was still radiant.  “Show-off,” she muttered.

“Open your eyes, Bella,” I said quietly.  She opened her eyes and saw me standing there.  “I was thinking, while I was running…” I paused.  “About not hitting trees, I hope.” She said jokingly.

“Silly Bella,” I chuckled.  “Running is a second nature to me; it’s not something I have to think about.”  “Show-off,” She muttered again. I smiled.

“No,” I continued, “I was thinking there was something I wanted to try.”  I took her face in my hands again.  She didn’t breath.  I hesitated…not the way a man would hesitate before he kissed a woman.  Then slowly after a few moments I brought my cold lips to hers, gently.  Her breath became wild gasps, and she entangled her fingers in my hair, as she parted her lips to breathe in my scent.

Immediately I used my hands to gently push her face back.  She opened her eyes and saw the guarded expression on my face.   “Oops,” she breathed.

“That’s an understatement.”  My eyes were wild, and my jaw clenched in acute restraint.  I held her face just inches from mine.  “Should I…?”

She started to attempt to give me some room, but I refused to let her move an inch.  “No, it’s tolerable.  Wait for a moment please.” I said in a polite controlled voice.  She kept her eyes on mine, she could see that the excitement faded and gentled.

I smiled an impish smile.  “There,” I said impressed with myself.  “Tolerable?” She asked.

I laughed out loud.  “I’m stronger than I thought.  It’s nice to know.”  “I wish I could say the same. I’m sorry.”  “You are only human, after all.” I replied.  “Thanks so much.” She replied bitterly.

I was on my feet in one swift movement, and held my hand out to her.  She took my icy hand, needing the support more than she thought.  Her balance hadn’t returned yet.

“Are you still faint from the run?  Or was my kissing expertise?” I laughed.  “I can’t be sure, I’m still woozy.” She managed to respond. 

“I think it’s some of both, though.” I said.  “Maybe you should let me drive.”  “Are you insane?” She protested.

“I can drive better than you on your best day,” I teased.  “You have much slower reflexes.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t think my nerves, or my truck, could take it.”  “Some trust, please, Bella” I replied.

She had her hand in her pocket, and I can only assume that she was clutching the key firmly in her hand.  She pursed her lips, deliberately, than shook her head with a tight grin.  “Nope.  Not a chance.”  I raised my eyebrow in disbelief.

 

She started to step around me, heading for the driver’s side.  I might’ve let her pass if she hadn’t wobbled slightly.  I created an inescapable snare with my hands around her waist.

“Bella I’ve already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive.  I’m not about to let you get behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can’t even walk straight.  Besides, friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” I quoted and chuckled.

“Drunk?” she objected.  “You’re intoxicated by my very presence.” I said grinning with a playful smirk.

“I can’t argue with that,” she sighed.  She knew there was no way around it; that she couldn’t resist me.  She held the key up high and dropped it, watching my hand flash like lightening to catch it soundlessly.  “Take it easy…my truck is a senior citizen.”

“Very sensible,” I said approvingly.   “And are you not affected at all?” She asked irked.  “By my presence?”

My expression became soft, warm.  I didn’t answer her at first; I simply bent my face to hers, and brushed my lips slowly along her jaw, from her ear to her chin, back and forth.  She trembled.  “Regardless,” I finally muttered.  “I have better reflexes.