Sorry for the wait, guys. I was sick for a couple weeks and my creative energy was just nonexistent. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. My heart belongs to Edward Cullen.

Chapter Four: Ravenous

Three hours later, I ducked back through her open window, my feet making no noise on the worn wooden floorboards as I crossed to the rocking chair once again, returning to my vigil of sorts. Waiting for her. Always and only for her.

I'd appeared at the front door to spend my allotted two and a half hours with Bella at exactly seven o'clock-sans car, which Charlie thankfully didn't notice, as I had not wanted to leave her to retrieve it. I was being unforgivably sloppy today with our usual carefully observed covers designed to keep human suspicion from falling upon us.

I had no patience for such things, not today. Not when my mind was teetering on the edge of insanity. Appearing more than ten miles away from my home without any apparent means of transportation other than my own feet was the very least of my worries.

I waited, silent and still. Despairing, and determined.

This could not go on any longer.

I would take care of her, nourish her body, heal her mind and her scarred heart.

I was the one who had wounded it, and I would be the one to fix it.

Time does not move the same for my kind as it does for humans. Hours pass in what seem mere moments when you have eternity stretching before you. Yet it seemed a century passed as I waited for her to come upstairs.

When she came into her room at last after calling a goodnight to Charlie, I held out the container of mushroom ravioli wordlessly.

She looked at it with surprise and more than a little apprehension.

"I already ate," she said plaintively.

I didn't reply, and I didn't lower the container. I patted my lap, inviting her to sit.

She came forward slowly, hesitantly, like a cornered animal, her face tormented.

"Please, Bella." I gestured her forward again, relieved when she finally climbed into my lap, her face pinched with fear, as though she were stepping up to the gallows.

I handed her the plastic fork, and her shoulders slumped in defeat.

I watched for the next forty-five minutes as she consumed tiny bites of ravioli with agonizing slowness, her struggle plain on her face. I rubbed her back gently the entire time, her pain echoing in my own chest.

Why was it so difficult for her to eat? I wanted so badly to know the demons that haunted her, creating shadows in her beautiful eyes and hollows in her pale cheeks. I wanted to know her mind, hear her thoughts and vanquish her dragons forever.

I wouldn't press her for answers tonight, though. Her emotions were already hanging by the barest thread, and I feared that having that discussion now would cause it to snap. It was enough that she was eating. Enough for tonight.

I watched as she swallowed a pill from each of the bottles I'd brought her, silent and resigned, her face a still mask, tension roiling beneath the surface. She balked when I tried to press a protein bar on her.

"Please, Edward, no more." She was near tears again, her features pinched. I could not help but have pity, hating to cause her distress of any kind. She had made enough progress for tonight, and now she needed rest.

"Alright, love. No more for tonight. Sleep now, sweetheart, while I hold you. I'll be here with you all night, and I won't let anything harm you."

I carried her to her bed, her body seemingly weightless against the steel muscles of my arms, pulling back the blankets and tucking her securely beneath them. I lay down beside her, wrapping my arms tightly around her bundled form.

"I love you, Bella. Rest now," I murmured into her hair, brushing my mouth against the soft strands. "I'll take care of you, beautiful girl." I pressed a kiss to her temple, then tucked her head carefully under my chin and began to hum her lullaby.

But her body was still rigid with tension as she moved restlessly, sleep eluding her despite her exhaustion. She shifted against me, shrugging her arms and torso free of the encumbering blankets.

"Kiss me," she begged, and her voice was like the pulsing ache of a bruise.

I kissed her lips lightly, softly, so carefully, ever aware of the fragility of this precious girl in my arms.

Her response was immediate and overwhelming.

Her hands locked onto the collar of my shirt as her mouth opened, a shuddering sigh escaping her lips. She dragged her body closer to mine, her mouth feverish as she kissed me back voraciously.

Her breath was a cloud of the most heady perfume in my mouth. Her taste exploded across my ravenous tongue, more blindingly delicious than any blood I'd ever tasted save hers. I felt a rush of cold venom flooding my mouth, a helpless response to the aching desire her exquisite scent engendered. The monster within me reared up, roared, urging me to take what my nature demanded I have, to sate the feral beast with her hot, ambrosial blood.

He was leashed, restrained beneath iron bands forged out of love for the human girl in my arms. I would protect my Bella from anything that tried to harm her, including the monster that lived within my wretched stone body.

He struggled against his bonds, shrieking for blood, but to no avail. My love for her was too strong to ever allow him release.

I already knew I could not live if she didn't. The thought of her ceasing to exist was...unbearable.

The pain in my throat was scorching nevertheless, flames searing and ripping at me without mercy. Her tongue moved over my lower lip without warning, sending a particularly brutal wave of her divine flavor into my mouth with her sighing breath.

I pulled back, startled and unsettled by the strength of my reaction. "Bella..." I warned.

Her eyes were slightly glazed, and she breathed heavily, gasping for air and sending yet more waves of her exquisite scent over my face. She leaned forward and pressed another hard kiss to my mouth. Her heart pounded a frantic staccato rhythm against my palm where it rested on her back.

She pulled back this time, a tiny, needy whimper breaking from her swollen lips. Her hungry eyes locked on mine as she tugged on my arm, breaking my hold on her and taking my hand in hers.

She pulled my hand toward her, and pressed it firmly against her breast, her back arching instantly against my palm.

I gasped as another monster roared to life inside of my body with a terrifying appetite of his own.

Her eyes fell closed as her mouth fell open, and a sound escaped her, a whimpering, shuddering moan that made my traitorous body burn and tighten unbearably in helpless response.

I was off the bed and across the room before the sound was complete.

We stared at one another.

I crouched against the wall beside her window, my body shaking with horrified reaction to what had just happened. The ripe, aching fullness in my lower body was a pulsing throb as the arousal I was normally able to control in her presence through sheer force of will tormented me, refusing to be tamed.

I wondered if she could see it, and I felt a sharp flare of embarrassment and shame.

I could still feel the ghost of her on my palm, my cold marble hand tingling with a strange fire, remembering the feel of her small soft breast, the heat of her burning through the single thin layer of cotton that covered her.

My body hardened still further at the memory, and I shivered helplessly as the heated sensations in my body intensified. The hand that had touched her in that soft, forbidden place ached with heated pinpricks of pleasure and...want.

This new monster wanted to devour her in a wholly other way.

He wanted to touch her there again.

He wanted to pull away the concealing fabric, and see.

He wanted to press and stroke and cup and kiss and...taste.

Not her blood.

My chest heaved as my gaze dropped against my will, falling on the small, subtly rounded curves of her breasts beneath her blue cotton shirt. Her body vibrated, pulsed with each panting breath, each pounding, fluttering beat of her heart.

Her nipples were pebbled with arousal, pressing stiffly against the thin fabric that covered them.

I tore my eyes away, flinching back against the wall, my hands clenching into fists in a spasm of shame.

My mother—both of my mothers—had raised me to be a gentleman. What was I doing, staring at her secret places, violating her privacy in such a shameful way? Leering at her, salivating as though she were a choice piece of meat.

I turned my eyes toward the floor, unable to meet Bella's gaze.

What must she think of me?

"Edward?" Her voice was soft, hesitant, unsure.

I couldn't bear to look at her, terrified to see the accusation that would surely be in her eyes.

"Edward, please...please look at me." Her voice broke, a sound like an unhealed wound, betraying an ocean of hurt roiling beneath the surface.

Hurt.

My accursed hand, that even now was clenched in a grip tight enough to crush stone.

My Bella's soft flesh, delicate as spun glass beneath my hard palm.

Hurt.

NO!

My gaze whipped toward hers, my head lifting with an audible snap.

Her face...

Pained did not begin to describe it. She stared at me with broken brown eyes.

I was back across the room in an instant, kneeling beside her on the bed, my hands hovering over her shoulders, afraid to touch, to harm her anymore than I already had with an incautious hand.

"Did I hurt you?" My voice was pure agony, an echo from the inside of a lonely grave, buried alive.

Oh, God, what had I done?

Her brow puckered. "What?"

"How badly are you hurt?" My voice was a panicked moan of horror and gut-wrenching fear.

My mind filled with sickened imaginings.

Her soft white breast marred with a dark blue-black bruise in the exact shape of my cold, hard, impossibly strong hand, delicate blood vessels crushed beneath my careless touch.

The sound of her fragile, calcium-starved ribs cracking beneath my other hand where it had rested on her back. Would I even have heard that sound above the snarling of the twin monsters inside me? My mind, usually so acutely aware of the frailty of her human body, had been unforgivably distracted by my sheer lust for this beautiful siren of a girl.

A single moment's inattention on my part was all that was necessary. A single careless touch, and her bones would turn to dust beneath my hands. Her skin would shatter under my fingers like the bursting of a soap bubble. Her internal organs would be crushed.

I was utterly repulsed by every part of what I was. Would I never stop harming her?

My panic only grew as Bella remained silent, staring at me in seeming confusion, forehead still creased, lips open but unmoving.

"Answer me, Bella, please! Where do you hurt?" My voice was almost certainly loud enough to wake Charlie, but I was far beyond caring.

"Why would you think I was hurt, Edward?" Her expression was bewildered.

"Just tell me, Bella. Does it hurt to breathe? Did I injure your ribs? Or your..." I couldn't speak the word. I kept my eyes carefully away from her chest, the hand that had touched her there in that soft place curling inward, as if to instinctively restrain itself from doing her further harm.

My other hand moved to hover over my own hip, preparing to rip my cell phone out of my pocket and call Carlisle, ask him to meet us at the hospital. She would need medical attention immediately.

My stomach heaved with revulsion.

I would gladly rip off my own hands if I had done her even the smallest injury.

"I'm fine, Edward," she said at last, her voice bemused. "I'm not hurt at all. Why would you think I would be?"

"You're certain? Don't be brave for my sake, Bella. You must tell me if I hurt you. Are you absolutely certain you're alright?"

I could not allow her to let me off the hook for this, to suffer in silence for the sake of alleviating my guilt.

"I'm sure," she insisted. "I'm okay. Tell me why you thought that."

"My hands..." I shuddered to think of the damage they could do to her. I wanted to pull the fabric of her shirt aside to check for bruising. I wanted to rush her to the hospital for x-rays, just

to be safe.

Damn it. Why couldn't I be a normal human man? A man who could touch her without fearing he would kill her, mangle her tender flesh beyond recognition. A man who could give her physical love. Give her pleasure without pain.

I was not that man. As much as I wished I could be, I would never be that man.

Despair washed over me in drowning waves as I realized how truly inadequate I was. How could I expect her to stay with me when there were so many things I couldn't do for her? So many desires I could never fulfill. I could only give her pain, and loss, and the darkness of endless night.

Desperate to reassure myself that she was unharmed, I allowed my shaking hands to touch her at last, laying them carefully on her shoulders, gently, so gently. I smoothed my palms down her back with a feather-light touch, softly feeling for any injuries to her ribs or spine. I watched her face intently, waiting for the wince that would give her away, but it never came.

The breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding left my body in a gust, profound relief making my body sag, my knees trembling in reaction. I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her sweet-scented hair as her arms came around me in return.

"I'm sorry, Bella." I needed to apologize to her for so many things, not least of which was the events of the past five minutes.

I was sorry for leaving her.

I was sorry for being a monster instead of a man.

Sorry for touching her with hands that could destroy.

Sorry that I couldn't touch her again.

Sorry for wanting to.

"What do you have to be sorry for?" She spoke into my neck, the soft vibrations of her voice and the gentle whisper of her breath on my skin soothing me like a lullaby, quiet and sweet. Her scent was like a perfumed drug as I breathed her in, calming me as only her nearness could.

"I could have hurt you, love. I came so close to hurting you..."

She huffed an exasperated sigh. "You didn't hurt me, Edward. Besides, I was the one who made you touch me..." I felt the heat of her blush against my skin as she buried her face more deeply into my neck. "I wanted you to touch me," she whispered into my throat. She pulled back to look at me, an expression of pleading on her pale, tired face. "You didn't hurt me, Edward. You won't hurt me. Please..."

She leaned forward suddenly and seized my lips in another fierce kiss, her mouth pressing so hard against mine that I feared she would draw blood, the fragile tissue of her lips cracking under the pressure of my hard mouth.

I pulled back slightly, easing the pressure on her soft flesh. "Careful, love," I cautioned.

She made a frustrated sound, half whimper, half plea. "You won't hurt me," she said again. Her body quivered restlessly in my arms. She reached out and seized my hand in a feverish grip, drawing it once again toward her breast, her body straining closer to mine.

"No." My arm turned to stone beneath her fingers, halting its progress only the barest inch away from her chest. The heat from her tiny body bloomed enticingly against my palm, calling to me, the sweetest, most drugging lure imaginable. The thought of touching her again was like an opiate to my senses, the desperate, aching hunger near impossible to deny.

But I had to deny it.

I would keep her safe.

She released my hand, her arms dropping to her sides in defeat. An expression of raw pain once again flickered over her face, contorting her features. The most desolate look filled her soft brown eyes, and then suddenly they went flat. Empty, hollow, expressionless.

A thrill of pure, unadulterated fear skated down my spine.

I almost couldn't bear to hold her empty gaze, and then she was the one looking away, her eyes focusing somewhere left of my shoulder.

"I can't...do that with you, Bella," I said haltingly, my usually infallible voice hoarse with sorrow and regret. "You know I can't. It just isn't possible for us. It wouldn't be safe for you. I'm so sorry I can't give you that, sweetheart."

Her face flushed with embarrassment, but she still wouldn't meet my eyes. I rubbed my palms softly over her shoulders, attempting to loosen her stiff posture without success.

"It's fine," she said in a dull voice, her features still set in an emotionless mask that frightened me beyond telling. She turned away, righting the tangled bedclothes and lying back down on her side, her back to me as she huddled beneath the blankets.

I hesitated. Was she angry with me? "Do you...want me to sit in the chair tonight, love?" As badly as I wanted to hold her while she slept, I would never subject her to an unwelcomed touch. If she needed space, I would give her what she needed, though my empty arms would ache all night, bereft, desperate to comfort her.

"No," she said quietly.

"Do you want me to go?" I would leave if she asked me to, though it felt like it would kill me, to not be where she was. I held my breath, waiting for her answer. Exactly how badly had I messed up tonight?

"No!" Her voice was loud this time, panicked. She twisted her body around to face me, scrambling into a sitting position, eyes frantic as she reached out a hand as if in supplication. "Please don't leave me, Edward! Please!" She seized my hand in a death grip, squeezing so hard I feared the tiny bones in her hand would crack against my marble skin. "I'm sorry, I won't do it again, just please wait! Please don't go!" Her voice was near hysterical now as she clutched at me.

I thought over my words, and realized what she would have heard in them. And I cursed myself for a thoughtless fool.

"That's not what I meant, Bella. I'm not going to leave you. I'll never go anywhere unless you ask me to." How long would it be before she believed my words? Believed in me again? How many times would we replay this scene before I earned back the trust I had crushed? The trust I had thrown away like so much garbage. If only I had realized what a precious gift it was. "I only meant for the night, love. I want to stay here with you, every night as long as you'll allow it. But I'll understand if you...don't want me here tonight." I caressed her hair as the terror began to fade from her eyes. "I'd still be waiting for you in the morning."

"I want you here," she said in a small voice, reaching out to touch my face in turn. "I'm sorry for reacting that way again, I...I'm so sorry, I trust you, I do..." She shook her head, frustrated, then met my eyes, hers full of unnecessary apologies, unneeded pleas for forgiveness. "Please stay with me, Edward. There won't ever be a night when I'll turn you away."

"And there won't ever be a night when I don't want to be with you, love." She smiled a little, but it quivered around the edges. She pulled me toward her as she lay back down, wrapping my arm tightly around her waist as we settled back into her bed.

Her dreams this night were restless, her limbs moving, tangling in the blankets as she shifted. The only thing that never moved was the hand she'd placed on my arm, as if to prevent me from pulling away. The furrow between her brows seemed permanently etched into her porcelain skin.

Her sleep talking began around midnight, strange broken mutterings that seemed unconnected.

"It's okay, Dad..." The crease between her brows deepened as she spoke.

"...mint chocolate chip..." She whimpered, a longing sound.

"...no olives..." Her hand twitched against my arm.

Her breathing accelerated . "Please, Edward..." Anything, Bella. Anything.

"Stay," she sighed. "Don't go. Please...don't go."

The same words she'd spoken that first night. The night I'd slipped through her window for the first time, watching this stunning brown-haired girl who'd captured my dead heart as she slept, murmuring in her dreams. Only this time her voice was an anxious plea as her hand contracted around my arm, clutching my sleeve tightly in her fist.

"I won't, Bella," I murmured into her ear. "I'll always be here, love."

She sighed again, and settled, the tension in her limbs easing a bit. I held her as tightly as I dared.

My beautiful Bella.

I would never let her go.

But as she drifted into deeper sleep, she spoke one last time. Her words stabbed at me, white hot pain shredding at my chest, and I wondered if I'd already lost her, even as I held her safe in my arms.

Perhaps she would be the one to let go. Perhaps she already had, whether her conscious mind realized it or not.

"Wait, Jake," she whispered.

Don't worry-this is an E/B story all the way. I'm just all about the angst. :)

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