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| Date: | January 18th, 2009 - 06:51 pm |
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"Will you kiss me, Jacob?"
His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed suspiciously. "You're bluffing."
"Kiss me, Jacob. Kiss me, and then come back."
He hesitated in the shadow, warring with himself. He half-turned again to the west, his torso twisting
away from me while his feet stayed planted where they were. Still looking away, he took one uncertain
step in my direction, and then another. He swung his face around to look at me, his eyes doubtful.
I stared back. I had no idea what expression was on my face.
Jacob rocked back on his heels, and then lurched forward, closing the distance between us in three long
strides.
I knew he would take advantage of the situation. I expected it. I held very still - my eyes closed, my
fingers curled into fists at my sides - as his hands caught my face and his lips found mine with an
eagerness that was not far from violence.
I could feel his anger as his mouth discovered my passive resistance. One hand moved to the nape of my
neck, twisting into a fist around the roots of my hair. The other hand grabbed roughly at my shoulder,
shaking me, then dragging me to him. His hand continued down my arm, finding my wrist and pulling my
arm up around his neck. I left it there, my hand still tightly balled up, unsure how far I could go in my
desperation to keep him alive. All the while his lips, disconcertingly soft and warm, tried to force a
response out of mine.
As soon as he was sure I wouldn't drop my arm, he freed my wrist, his hand feeling its way down to my
body against his.
His lips gave up on mine for a moment, but I knew he was nowhere close to finished. His mouth
followed the line of my jaw, and then explored the length of my neck. He freed my hair, reaching for my
other arm to draw it around his neck like the first.
Then both of his arms were constricted around my waist, and his lips found my ear.
"You can do better than this, Bella," he whispered huskily. "You're overthinking it."
I shivered as I felt his teeth graze my earlobe.
"That's right," he murmured. "For once, just let yourself feel what you feel."
I shook my head mechanically until one of his hands wound back into my hair and stopped me.
His voice turned acidic. "Are you sure you want me to come back? Or did you really want me to die?"
Anger rocked through me like the whiplash after a heavy punch. That was too much - he wasn't
fighting fair.
My arms were already around his neck, so I grabbed two fistfuls of his hair - ignoring the stabbing pain
in my right hand - and fought back, struggling to pull my face away from his.
And Jacob misunderstood.
He was too strong to recognize that my hands, trying to yank his hair out by the roots, meant to cause
him pain. Instead of anger, he imagined passion. He thought I was finally responding to him.
With a wild gasp, he brought his mouth back to mine, his fingers clutching frantically against the skin at
my waist.
The jolt of anger unbalanced my tenuous hold on self-control; his unexpected, ecstatic response
overthrew it entirely. If there had been only triumph, I might have been able to resist him. But the utter
defenselessness of his sudden joy cracked my determination, disabled it. My brain disconnected from my
body, and I was kissing him back. Against all reason, my lips were moving with his in strange, confusing
ways they'd never moved before - because I didn't have to be careful with Jacob, and he certainly
wasn't being careful with me.
My fingers tightened in his hair, but I was pulling him closer now.
He was everywhere. The piercing sunlight turned my eyelids red, and the color fit, matched the heat. The
heat was everywhere. I couldn't see or hear or feel anything that wasn't Jacob.
The tiny piece of my brain that retained sanity screamed questions at me.
Why wasn't I stopping this? Worse than that, why couldn't I find in myself even the desire towant to
stop? What did it mean that I didn't wanthim to stop? That my hands clung to his shoulders, and liked
that they were wide and strong? That his hands pulled me too tight against his body, and yet it was not
tight enough for me?
| | From: | up |
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| Date: | January 18th, 2009 - 06:51 pm |
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Jacob was right. He'd been right all along. He was more than just my friend. That's why it was so
impossible to tell him goodbye - because I was in love with him. Too. I loved him, much more than I
should, and yet, still nowhere near enough. I was in love with him, but it was not enough to change
anything; it was only enough to hurt us both more. To hurt him worse than I ever had. I didn't care about more than that - than his pain. I more than deserved whatever pain this caused me.
I hoped it was bad. I hoped I would really suffer.
In this moment, it felt as though we were the same person. His pain had always been and would always
be my pain - now his joy was my joy. I felt joy, too, and yet his happiness was somehow also pain.
Almost tangible - it burned against my skin like acid, a slow torture.
For one brief, never-ending second, an entirely different path expanded behind the lids of my tear-wet
eyes. As if I were looking through the filter of Jacob's thoughts, I could see exactly what I was going to
give up, exactly what this new self-knowledge would not save me from losing. I could see Charlie and
Renee mixed into a strange collage with Billy and Sam and La Push. I could see years passing, and
meaning something as they passed, changing me. I could see the enormous red-brown wolf that I loved,
always standing as protector if I needed him. For the tiniest fragment of that second, I saw the bobbing
heads of two small, black-haired children, running away from me into the familiar forest. When they
disappeared, they took the rest of the vision with them.
And then, quite distinctly, I felt the splintering along the fissure line in my heart as the smaller part
wrenched itself away from the whole.
Jacob's lips were still before mine were. I opened my eyes and he was staring at me with wonder and
elation. "I have to leave," he whispered.
