Mind The Gap / 13

I got into bed and didn’t get out for almost two days.

My hip ached something awful and I just kept reliving that horrid split-second, mid-air and helpless, over and over and over until my sheets stank of it. Stuck in some awful parallel universe where nothing could ever change, except for the worst. Every moment mired in pain and lust and confusion.

I didn’t know what to do about Bella.

I was pretty certain that I needed her, somehow, and in a way that didn’t only involve rocks. Certain, now more than ever, that this all happened for a reason and that the boundary between our real lives and our extracurricular ones deserved to be breached. Seeing her in the nursery had cast a whole different light, brought her to the surface and made me realize that she’d probably amaze me just as much in her everyday world as she did on a boulder. That’s when I started fantasizing about the the mundane sort of shit, the way she folded her laundry and if she sang in the shower. Did she eat on the couch, or at the table? How many different colors of underwear did she have, and was her birthday in the fall, or the summer? Did she talk to her plants when she watered them? Was she allergic to avocados?

I peered through the crack in that giant dam and liked what I saw. A lot. The wave of the future. It pushed me right out of bed and into the shower for the first time since my one with Bella. Swept me into clothes and out the door. Hurtled me down the highway at warp speeds and deposited me at her door before I had even formulated a plan. I only knew that I wanted to be there. With her.

I plucked a poppy from the next door neighbor before I rang the bell.

I really had no idea what I was planning to do, or where we were going until we were actually headed there. I fixed her breakfast while she changed into something awesomely short and practically see-through, ushering her to the car before I could change my mind and just keep her there all day. She curled up in the front seat, making that car look better than it ever had before.

---

The road to the fire tower was like a video game.

In the little silver beamer, that is.

Twisted and full of switchbacks sharp enough to pull your stomach clear into the back seat. I let the car growl underneath me, enjoying the smooth purr of the engine which was a change from the rough, grinding growl of the Rover. Slammed my foot alternately between the gas and the brake until we came to stop dusted stop at the base of the fire tower, practically in the clouds.

I thought at first that she was fighting her fear of heights when she hesitated at the bottom of the ladder, but it really only turned out to be something much simpler than that.

Her panties could not be considered clothing. Sheer in every place that counted and lacy everywhere else.

I watched her scamper all the way to the top and disappear through the hole before I even bothered to touch the ladder myself, thoroughly enjoying the view. And then, that was it. The moment I was supposed to breach the barrier, and I felt like I need to be touching her while I did it for some reason. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be and she agreed easily, all my anxiety for nothing. I dropped her off at home and spent the next four hours trying not to think about her.

---

The concerts started long ago with a volunteer position but became something that I couldn’t let go of. At this point, yes, I was getting paid for it, but even if I wasn’t I probably would have continued. I worked with the theater director to create the light show, timing it to a musical set list and began playing under educational contracts. A grant came through last year that allowed us to incorporate vibration sensors into the theater seats and the program was steadily expanding. I played lots of easy, recognizable standard, Disney covers and lullabyes, but the challenge wasn’t what I was shooting for.

My favorite part was the end.

I would bow and wave and smile at the kids for a while as they cheered before ducking backstage, finding my way to the front of the building so that I could greet them in the lobby as they exited. Some stood far away in groups, frantic hands and pointing conversations, while others would cuddle close and touch my fingers, cuffs and elbows. I let them feel my hands, the calluses on my fingers and answered their questions, every so often watching one of the blind children tap-tap-tapping back to a group of deaf ones to relay my answers in surprisingly fluent sign language.

Life was such a tactile sport.

I found Bella in her secluded balcony, the best seat in the house as far as I was concerned. The acoustics were better in the lofted seating and while I enjoyed my own view of the evening enough, I’m sure it was even more spectacular from above. She didn’t disappoint, met me with a hug and a squeal, and I escorted her back to my car, trying in vain to keep my eyes off the fuckhot dress she was sporting. Tight and short and covering far too much of her skin.

It rendered me completely unable to keep my hands to myself.

I was ready to take her in the car, dinner be damned. I pulled her into my lap and let her grind down on me with her lips to my neck and my fingers everywhere, prepared to rid her of the dress and get straight to the point. It was tight and short and did fantastic things for her ass but I’d much rather see her out of it. Just as I was fumbling for the zipper that laced up her back, a beam of light flooded over the roof of the car and Bella crouched down on top of me, huddled in my lap.

“Security guard,” she whispered and the light brushed slowly across the inside of the car, windows fogged. It took entirely too long for the guard eventually moved on and Bella scrambled off my lap into her own seat when he did. I reached for her, intending to drag her back but she shook her head and curled up against the door.

“Take me home,” she panted.

Yes, ma’am.

We somehow made it through her door, though I barely remembered driving there. I’m sure I parked like a complete asshole. I held off on the temptation to strip her naked on the front lawn and let her close the door behind us before I was worming my hands under the hem of her dress and demanding that she take it off. I have no idea how she got it on because it took both of us to get her out of it.

Jesus christ, she was even more beautiful underneath all of it.

Was that even possible?

She was right when she said she’d never worn much around me up until now, her tiny shorts and sports bras barely qualifying, but there was always more fabric and less skin than I secretly wished for. Now that she had it all on display, I could barely bring myself to believe it. I tossed my bow tie into the black-hole oblivion just outside the three foot bubble of everything that mattered, her right there in the center of it, trying to tell myself to take this slowly.

That rushing through this would do no justice to the time we spent formulating it.

That plan failed. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom. Instead, we ended up sprawled on the living room floor, naked and locked at the mouth and I hoped that she wouldn’t take it the wrong way that I’d stashed a condom in my pocket before I’d come to pick her up this evening. It had been burning a scorch mark against my ass cheek all night and I tried not to sigh in relief when she told me that I wasn’t the only one hoping for this.

Something about her face when she said it banished every last shred of uncertainty.

I looped my fingers behind her knees and pulled her forward, the cheeks of her ass nestled against my kneecaps and her thighs on either side of my waist. I couldn’t fucking wait to get myself in there, fingers or dick, and wasted no time sinking my thumb down into her folds, both of us shuddering. Her toes pressed insistently into my soles, breath lost, and I got her off just to fucking see it.

Once again, expectations blown.

I thought I’d seen beauty before. Some of the red-rock deserts that Jasper and I hiked into to climb, barren and twisted as a lunar landscape, had been eerily gorgeous. I’d gaped open-mouthed under sunsets stained unbelievable reds and golds, celestial Pollack paintings in the sky. Stood admiring the awesome lumbering grace of a giraffe for an entire day at the zoo last year and watched the ocean batter itself against the north shore of a mid-pacific island with a stunning sort of beauty. But I’d been using the word wrong all along. This was beautiful. Watching her fall apart against the backdrop of her hair and the flowered carpet beneath her, toes still dotting a morse code melody into my legs, was beautiful.

As soon as it was over, I wanted it again.

I pressed myself into her, planting my lips on her neck in case I made some totally indecent sounds because god fucking dammit, what the fuck had I been doing with myself all this time? Sex? That hadn’t been sex. All those other women, we must have just been playing pretend. The feel of this was unreal, an atom bomb dropped into my ocean and launching me twenty miles skyward.

I hurtled back to earth and cratered into the surface.

When I came-to, Bella was writhing underneath me, the bones of her hips pressing into mine until she found the sweet spot and everything around me clenched ferociously. We uttered expletives at practically the same time, Bella’s into the air, mine into her skin. Fuck. I gripped her tightly with tingling fingers and thrust into her as softly as I could force myself to. It was only when I remembered how fuckawesome her earlier orgasm looked that I managed to pull myself off her. I sat back on my heels and pulled her open, the sight of my dick disappearing into her just about toppling me over the edge far too soon. I couldn’t help that my next thrust was hard and fast, slippery skin glistening and wet and flushed.

“Goddamn, Bella. That’s gotta be the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” I basically growled. Forced the words out in a rough tumble that almost didn’t make sense. Bella trembled from head to foot and ground herself into me, a push for every pull that only spurred me on, pressing urgently into her as though this was all I’d ever get. I set my thumb back down over her clit and rubbed her in time to each clash of our hips.

If watching her had been incredible, feeling it was like nothing else, ever.

They should build monuments to this sort of thing. I got a flash of the Taj Mahal, pale and grandiose, a monstrous looming statement to undying love as Bella gasped and went limp for a split second. Weightless and breathless. Skin iridescent in the moonlight and everything around my dick hugged me tight enough to make my vision go static. I held off only long enough to see every last panting second of her fall before I allowed myself the last few thrusts that I needed to swan-dive off the edge of something too deep to see the bottom of.

Holy.

Fuck.

I emptied myself in a wave of stinging heat that bordered right there up on pain, lungs gone solid and muscles slack. I rolled off her so that I didn’t straight up crush her into the carpet and gulped air like it was watered down. My dick was twitching through its death throes against my stomach and the entirety of my skin felt just as sensitive as my ragged fingertips.

God, my hip was throbbing.

So fucking worth it.

Next

Mind The Gap / 12

I woke up in her bed.

White sheets printed with tiny purple flowers and blinding sunlight pouring in through the window. It took me a moment to register where I was, unfamiliar surroundings and enough pillows to supply a small department store. She was gone, the other side of the bed empty but the sheets were still warm and I knew she hadn’t been missing for long.

I rolled over in a fit of groggy sleep and remembered only then that my hip might be fucking broken. Yesterday came pouring back in a torrent of flooded images, all rock and blood and anger and steam and milky water pooling at our bare feet. Falling from the rock and landing in her mouth. The way she stood there in front of me, damp and warm and smelling like Rose’s flowers, dripping water onto my toes from the ends of her hair, asking me not to leave. “Stay. Please.”

We ended up in the shower. Stroke of genius on my part, though at the time I was really only concerned with getting all the chalk and grime off of her so that I could get a proper look at her bruises. I watched her peel herself out of her clothing, finally catching a mere glimpse of her naked body as she stepped into the steam and begged my dick to just let me be somewhat decent tonight.

It didn’t pay attention at all.

I spent the entire time trying to pretend that it wasn’t pressing up against her thigh as I cleaned her up, having to fold my hands over my stomach when I stepped away to let her wash her hair so that I wasn’t tempted to reach down and rub one out to the sight of it. Every delicious curve was there and I could already see the faint beginnings of her new muscles. Roping her arms and rising on her abdomen, laced in water and a steam.

This girl was going to be the damn death of me.

I set her on the vanity after the shower, head finally clear enough to take stock of the damage that had been done today. Her forearm was sporting a bruise the size of my hand, which meant that it stretched clear from her elbow to her wrist. I used Rose’s goop as an excuse to check out her bones, moving her wrist and bending her at the elbow, waiting for a wince or hiss of pain, but nothing came. The injury on her leg was worse, but again, there didn’t seem to be any damage to the bones which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

My hip, however, was surely bruised to the point of mush.

We tried to make out a few times, but never got farther than we had in the hallway. The bruise on my hip looked like a damn watercolor painting and when she tried to climb on top of me, her knee cap hit my surely crushed bone and I saw a flash of white light behind my eyes. I swore for a moment that I was going to be sick and tossed her off me, pressing my face into her sheets and letting the clean, sweet smell of her drown away the fading echos of pain.

Bella appeared in the doorway, knocking out of my daydream in my t shirt she’d thrown on last night, which barely covering anything. She padded into the room and stood beside the bed, offering me a cup of coffee. My eyes fell to the bruise on her arm and I swallowed down a lump of something awkward. This was the first time I’d ever woken up in a woman’s bed without having slept with her the night before and I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on between us.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her, accepting the cup and letting it burn my fingers.

“Sore,” she admitted. “You?”

“Same.” I really hoped my rapidly hardening dick wasn’t apparent under the thin sheet.

“Alice and Jasper are on their way.” Bella perched on the edge of the mattress, hair around her elbows and her face thoughtful.

“Together?”

Bella nodded and I thought about how dejected Jasper looked last night when we dropped him off, though I had barely bothered to notice at the time. It was interesting that he’d called Alice in lieu of Emmett, but I guess that in a way, he’d found himself a Gabby too.

---

Alice was in a fury when she arrived. She didn’t even greet us, just stomped in the door and demanded to see Bella’s leg. She gasped and threw her hands over her mouth in horror which she only removed to slap me when she spotted the bruise spanning my shoulder.

She even hit Jasper, which I took to be a bad sign.

“What would happen if you were out there, god knows fucking where, and you got pinned under a rock?” She glared at Bella and I got a surge of sudden angry strength, sure in an all-knowing instant that I would never let it happen.

“That wouldn’t happen,” I spat and Alice narrowed her eyes at me.

“You don’t know that.”

“We’d move the rock. She’s never out there alone.” It was true. A far as I was concerned, Bella wasn’t going to climb anywhere in the whole entire miserable world without me there beside her.

Ever.

“There are rocks even you can’t move, Edward,” Alice hissed at me, echoing the conversation that had been haunting me.

I hated more than anything that she was right.

Next

Mind The Gap / 11

Jasper had been climbing at a boulder field up north that was loosely coined Sailing Hawks, mostly for the high end subdivision that sprouted up around it and somewhat for the hawks that used to frequent the area. He’d been worrying himself over a problem there, sucked so far into his head that he plucked each and every last little fuzzball from my old couch before I finally agreed to abandon my trusted turf for a new one.

I told Bella not to bother bringing her shoes, but she tried to sneak them along anyway.

Her hand was getting better but she was in no shape to climb. The bruises were fading out to yellow and green, the swelling long-gone, yet I could tell it still hurt her. She winced sometimes when she picked up her fork and I caught her rubbing it tenderly during unguarded moments. Jasper took one look at it and agreed with me. I couldn’t help but smirk at her over his shoulder, knowing all the while that he’d back me up, and got to see that cute scowl of hers again.

Jasper and I hadn’t gotten much time together lately, something that I sort of felt guilty about but I shouldn’t have taken that climb from him. It was bad karma even though he asked me to do it, the rock singing for him and him alone. Those kinds of siren calls are meant for one person’s ears, which was why Jasper only half-heartedly attacked the Passion Pit. Fate has a way of staking her claim long before a climb has been completed and had named me in sole possession of the first ascent.

She must have surely done the same for Jasper because it was my touch that made the Delicate Place crumble.

Hindsight is such a bitch.

The point of impact was phenomenal. Blistering pain and blinding light. I thought for sure that I was dead for an entire split second, all those years of avoiding death finally catching up with me. But the rock fell clear and went headlong into the trees and I hit the mat with a solid grunt, the air leaving my lungs and my head spinning. I lay there and took an internal inventory, not moving until I was certain that nothing was broken.

I almost hit the mat again, the moment I sat up.

Bella was sprawled in the dirt, all limbs and hair and coughing.

One look at Jasper, standing ashen and paralyzed, confirmed all my worst fears.

I’d told her to stay away. Told her countless times to let me fall, that I would crush her, but in the end it wasn’t me at all. The rock that I thought might have killed me had taken her out too, and I could barely bring myself to inspect the damage. I was already so nauseous, head spinning and stomach curling in on itself, that the mere glimpse of one rapidly blooming bruise on her arm burst something hot and pulsing crimson behind my eyes.

Bella made a half hearted attempt at convincing us to stay but the day was officially ruined, dipped in liquid nitrogen and tapped ever so gently with a hammer, shattering into smithereens. As we finished packing up, I watched her attempt all of four hobbled steps before I demanded to carry her back to the car. It was hard to hold a civilized conversation through the blur of red fury and I probably threatened to knock her senseless if she kept fighting me on the issue, manners be damned. Jasper shouldered all of our gear and I bent to scoop her up into my arms, the air leaving her lungs and mine when I did.

So fucking light.

And so godawful heavy, all at the same time.

I marched us back to the parking lot under a burning golden sunset that did nothing to clear my vision. All I could see was that rock falling in an entirely different direction and pinning Bella to the forest floor. She had her head against my chest and I’m sure my heart was beating a staccato rhythm under her ear, pumping frantically through the millions of ways a falling rock could kill a person.

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes.

I deposited her in the back seat and drove us home in a screaming rage of silence. Focused on the headlights, blood boiling and skin gone up in flames. I was fucking livid. Angry with Jasper for no fucking reason, as though he somehow knew that this was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Irritated with Bella for not listening to me when I told her to stay out of the way.

Absolutely fucking irate with myself for letting it happen in the first place.

I toppled that rock. It could have been Jasper, true, but it was me and Bella was in the fucking way. Again. You would have thought my head smashing her hand had taught her something, but there she was, in the exact place she didn’t belong.

Underneath me.

I should be happy that she was concerned enough about me to even do such a thing. Should be ecstatic that she would put herself in front of a falling object that could easily fucking crush her, for me, but I couldn’t make myself. I watched her from the rearview mirror as she pulled my sweatshirt over her head and curled up on the crash pad in the back, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make my tendons sting.

All I could hear in my head the entire way home was Alice.

“You take care of her out there, right?”

---

I combusted the moment we got into her house.

I’d carried her inside, unable to watch her limp all the way to her door and deposited her at the threshold, not entirely sure if my arms could hold her any longer. I was trembling from head to toe and was just about ready to split open at the seams, a feeling so similar to the numbing onslaught that followed a first ascent that I half wondered where I was.

“You should have let me fall,” I growled at her, hands in my hair as I paced back and forth in the confines of her hallway. She slumped against the door and picked all the weight off her ankle, propping her foot up by the toes. When she spoke, her voice echoed through the hallway, soft and fragile.

“I was trying to spot you. I-”

“No! I told that you’d only get hurt! I told you to stay back. You should have listened to me!” I fucking shouted at her. Which was the last thing in the entire miserable world I ever wanted to do.

“Why are you yelling?” Bella shrunk against the door, tucking her arm behind herself to hide the bruise that was blooming there. That vision of her pooling blood into the pine needles flashed in front of my eyes again, eclipsing her face. Alice’s voice in my head again. “You take care of her out there, right?”

“Because I feel fucking responsible for you!” I raged, instantly reaching my tipping point and falling over the edge. My throat was so tight I could barely breath and I wanted to kiss her so badly I could hardly remember what I was so angry about.

“Why? Because I’m your Gabby?” Bella spit at me, taking a hostile stance to mirror my own and I fucking hated that I made her do that.

“No. It’s not that. I don’t want to call you that anymore,” I huffed, not wanting to ever hear that word in connection with her again. “I don’t want anyone to call you that.” I closed the distance between us, not wanting to have this conversation across the a bunch of space and stood right in front of her with my chest heaving. The red was fading to pearly rose pink but I was still shaking like a leaf.

“That’s why you call me Sparkles,” Bella grumbled and I shook my head in agitation.

“I don’t want to call you that anymore, either.”

“Then what do you want to call me?”

Jesus, I didn’t fucking know. I wanted to call her beautiful. I wanted to tell her that she’d spun my head around so hard that I couldn’t even come up with anything even mildly fitting for the exquisite weight all the air took on whenever she was near. Wanted to call a name across a crowded room and watch her turn her head with a smile that was meant only for me.

“Girl.” My brain to mouth transference is obviously out of order.

“That’s the best you could come up with? Girl? Not very creative, Edward.” Bella rolled her eyes and I didn’t blame her. The word alone was bare and bland. It was the connotation that was important.

“Not just girl. My girl.” It took everything in me not to choke on the words, reaching for her to ground myself, gripping her by the hip and pulling her up against me. Her body met mine in a molten fire spark of white light.

“Yours?” she whispered, and sounded just as breathless as I felt.

“Yeah. If you’ll let me.”

Bella flung her arms around my neck and teetered on her tip toes against me, her sore leg giving me the opportunity to hold her closer, lifting her off her feet. I came at her with an open mouth, pouring all my fear and hope and lust into her and sealing it off with my tongue across her lips. It felt so good, better than I had even thought it would and was only another example that I tended to take this girl for granted. When I picked her up to wrap her legs around my waist I didn’t even remember that anything hurt, lost in a haze of sparkled lust.

Until her thigh pressed up tight against my hip and catapulted a burning bolt of pain clear into the marrow of my bones, that is.

I wrenched my mouth off hers, pressing my lips to the skin of her neck and grinding my teeth through the pain, not wanting her to let go despite the pulsing agony. I latched my mouth onto her neck, tasting salt and dust and something subtly sweet.

“Ok.” Her breath blew in an lacy rush across my shoulder.

“Ok, what?” I fumbled to remember what we had even been talking about, fingers in her hips and her t-shirt in the fucking way. Hip on fire. Head in a tailspin.

“Ok, but you can’t ever call me Sparkles again.”

I groaned and clutched her closer, thumbs inching under the waist of her leggings and my knees trembling when her fingers scraped through my hair. She tried to pull my face from her neck but really only ended up digging her thumb into the oozing gouge on my temple. I hissed and she pulled her hand away, both of us eyeing the blood staining her thumb. My vision got lost in a blur of crimson and pale skin. Dots of ruby red scattered through the dust.

Even blood lost its color as it died, edging up on ebony with its last gasping breath.

“Just fucking listen to me next time, ok Sparkles?” It took a lot of effort to keep my face somewhat reserved, to keep from shaking her a little just to make sure the message sank in. I didn’t think I could take another scare like today. The thought of losing her now made me feel lightheaded and vulnerable.

Bella’s face pulled into that endearing scowl. “Hey, you-”

“Last time. I promise.”

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