Dreamscapes

She can't stop thinking of the look on his face when she broke his heart. He is the only person in her life who has been consistently good to her, kind to her, and she has brought him little but heartache and pain. She recalls his screams as his bones were re-broken. She knows he would suffer through that physical torture an infinite number of times if only she would take back her words. All she can see is the hope in his eyes as she finally admitted her love for him, and the shade that came over them when she said it wasn't enough. She wishes it could be different, wishes it could be other than it is. Wishes that her heart belonged to her so she could give it to him. She knows it would be safe in his care. But she gave away her heart long before she realized she could love him, and her heart was never returned to her. When Edward left, he took the broken pieces of her heart with him. Scattered them far from her on his travels. She found Edward just when she was on the cusp of taking back the broken fragments. She was about to pull them back to her. She was going to entrust them to Jacob. They both knew he would have fashioned the shattered pieces into something stronger than they were before. It's what he does. He fixes things. Makes them better. But before she had the chance, she fled halfway round the world, found Edward and brought him home, but she still doesn't know what he's done with her heart. She can't give her heart to Jacob because she doesn't know where it is. She's not even sure the pieces fit together anymore. Edward is back and she thinks he still has them, and he isn't giving them back. She has no choice in the matter. Edward has the pieces of her heart, so she can't give them away to someone else. It's been days since she broke Jacob's heart. It's been days since she left him lying in his small bed, since she broke his heart to reflect his broken body. She knows Jacob will heal. There is old magic in him. It will take his fractured bones and bruised body and mend it together. But who will mend Jacob's heart? Is there magic in him to repair what she has done to him? Jacob put her back together. Who will put him back together? She wants to undo what she has done. She feels guilt like she hasn't felt before. In the daylight hours, Edward tells her it's okay. Tells her that he knows she loves Jacob and didn't want to hurt him. Tells her that Jacob was there when he wasn't, and that it's okay that she loves him. She cries out that she loves Edward more. Murmurs that her love for Jacob is nothing compared to her love for him. Claims she has no regrets and wishes only for her eternity with him. But at night, with cold arms wrapped around her, she dreams of warmth. She dreams that the lips that brush against hers are soft and pliant. Now she knows just how right the other lips taste on her tongue, and she cannot deny them in her dreams. She is standing outside the closed door of his room. Everything she really wants is on the other side. Everything she really needs. Here, in the darkness of his home, she can admit it to herself. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. She enters, and quietly closes the door behind her. He is peaceful and still as he sleeps. She had forgotten how young he really is. How innocent he should be. Innocent no longer, forced into a world of monsters and demons, growing into a destiny he does not desire. She watches his chest slowly rise and fall. His chest is no longer bandaged; his bruises have faded in the days since she left him last. The casts are gone, but she knows he is not yet entirely well. Weak moonlight filters through the window, illuminating his bronze skin. She wants to touch it. Wants to run her fingers along his collarbone, lying exposed before her. Wants to trace a path up his neck, along his pulse. Once she's turned, will his pulse call out to her? Will the blood running through his veins sing to her? They tell her that the wolves are repulsive to them, that the scent repels them. She edges closer to him, close enough to inhale the combination of rainwater and pine needles and earth that is uniquely him. That she could ever find his scent anything other than alluring is preposterous. His scent is comfort. His scent is home. With her luck, he will be her singer, her mortal enemy whose heart she has broken. She sits on the edge of the bed, causing his thin bedsheet to slide down. The movement exposes his torso to her greedy eyes. Her breath hitches in her chest. He is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. How has she not realized that fact until now? Yes, her marble-skinned Adonis is a work of art. But here in front of her are a broader set of shoulders, a plumper set of lips, a thicker set of long, dark lashes, a more defined set of abdominals. She looks at the arms that carried her to safety, that caught her before she fell, that wrapped around her to pull her out of churning, deadly waters, and that spun her in circles of love and laughter. One of those arms is still healing from a dozen different fractures. He is made more beautiful because of his vulnerability. His impermanence. He is more beautiful because he can be taken away. Because despite the long life afforded him, someday he will be gone. She has almost lost him already. And now she has driven him away. She can't stand what she has done to him. So tonight she will make it up to him, if he will have her. She will give in to her true desire. She gently runs her hands along the planes of his stomach. She traces the ridge and valley of each rectus abdominis. Runs her index finger along the edge of his hip, where the external obliques point down to make a V. She traces back up. Serratus anterior. Pectoralis major. Deltoid. By the time she reaches the biceps, his eyes are open and looking right at her. He doesn't look at all surprised to see her. He knows her better than anyone else. He knows what she really needs. He can hear it in the sudden racing of her pulse. He can see it in the dilation of her pupils. He can hear it in the catching of her breath. He can smell it in the musky scent that floods his room as soon as she sees him looking at her. And now he wants to taste it on his tongue. He starts by slowly sitting up. He doesn't want to scare her away. Her fingers are still on his injured arm, so he runs the fingers of his other hand up her opposite arm. He traces the opposite path that her fingers just travelled. Fingers, hand, arm, shoulder, breast (oh, so lightly), stomach, hip. He leaves a trail of burning electricity along her skin underneath the t-shirt she wears to sleep. He pulls her closer to him, and tugs until she's seated against his uninjured side. He wraps his arm around her waist to pull her flush against him, and runs his fingers up her flank until they are tangled in her hair, gently cradling the base of her skull in his large hand. She is plaint against him and neither of them has blinked. He zeroes in on her parted lips. They are warm and soft and pink and still very much alive. He wants so very badly for them to stay that way. His words have not convinced her, but can his body? Is that why she came? He draws her in, dips his head, and barely brushes his bottom lip against hers. She lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding, and he breathes her in. She is gone. There is no point in resisting. She melts into him, her tongue reaching out to trace his lips. She could do this for days. This is the way a kiss is supposed to feel. Heat and passion, not cold and restraint. There is need and want and lust. But most of all, there is love. She relishes his grip in her hair. He is flexing his injured hand gently against her thigh. The cotton beneath his fingers is soft, the flesh beneath even softer. She isn't sure if he has pulled her down or if she has pushed him back, but she finds herself lying on top of him, straddling his left leg through the thin sheet, her chest flush against his and her lips running down along his jaw. She nuzzles her nose along the sensitive skin of his neck and kisses the dip where his neck meets his shoulder. She tastes the salt of his skin and he moans. The sound provokes another rush of arousal in her, and she isn't embarrassed in the least to know that his heightened senses can pick up on every physical sign of her need for him. Because she can tell just how hard he is against her leg. His fingers release their grip on her hair and her leg to find that the skin of her back is even smoother than he remembers. He has held her before, touched her skin, but never like this. He needs more, and so does she. He traces her vertebrae upward with his good hand under her shirt, while with his injured one he lightly tickles her flank, finding sensitive spots that he memorizes for later. She squirms a little, and he wonders what she'll do if he runs tongue there instead. He reaches a spot that makes her back arch, causing her to pull back from him just a little.