A/N: Here's a long-awaited update! Review and send me some encouragement…

Conflicted

BPOV

God, what had I done?

Emotionally drained, I collapsed on the living room couch, letting my mind replay what I had just done to Edward in excruciating detail.

The look on his face when I'd first let him out of the dark prison in my head was priceless; a mixture of confusion, irritation, and awe. I had almost felt sorry for him—for the torture I had planned—but the burning in my throat reminded me that he was the one who had sentenced me to this miserable existence. I had wanted to make him feel some fraction of the helplessness and shame that I felt on the day he killed me.

I'd made him experience it—he cried out for me to stop, but I wanted… I needed him to see what he did to me that day. Edward was the most selfish creature I had ever met—he didn't have an empathetic bone in his cold, dead body, and I knew that the only way to make him understand what I went through was to force him to feel it for himself. But even after I had shown him my death, and he was shivering and keening in horror, it still wasn't enough! The monster in me screamed for more… more fear, more humiliation, more degradation… I wondered if it would ever be enough. If I tore him apart and burned him to ash in a rage, might I weep over his charred remains because there was nothing more I could do to torture him?

When I had noticed that he'd gotten aroused by the nightmarish images that played out in my mind, I totally lost it. At that moment, I lost whatever tenuous grip on sanity that I had, and my true nature was revealed. Just thinking about what I had done made me sick, and I rolled off the couch and into the floor, landing on my hands and knees with my forehead pressed to the hardwood. My lips formed a scream, but nothing came out. I sobbed and wretched silently, because I didn't deserve the satisfaction of making a sound.

I had looked at him and touched him, even as he begged me to stop. Brazenly, I'd torn his jeans open and tugged them down, freeing his naked erection. When my gaze traveled down along the fine line of bronze hair below his belly button, I couldn't tear my eyes away. I examined him openly to make him uncomfortable, but also in naïve fascination, because I had never seen a naked man before, apart from pictures in textbooks. His cock was long and smooth and hard, and it looked like it was sculpted out of marble. I grazed the tip of it with my fingertips, making him hiss at my touch, and my own body automatically reacted by growing warmer and wetter.

The fact that my body was responding to this monster's nakedness disturbed me, and I wanted to make him pay for ever getting hard in the first place. I wrapped my hand around his firm length, just like I'd heard girls talk about in the locker room, and started stroking him up and down. Edward had closed his eyes in response, whimpering softly. I'd felt darkly powerful as I held his sensitive length in my hand and rubbed him closer and closer to orgasm. He tried to resist me, but when he unconsciously began to rock his hips into my hand, I knew he was close. Instinctively, I knew what to do to bring him over the edge, and I did so shamelessly, grabbing at his nipple and rubbing my own wetness across his mouth.

When he came, his soft, male groan might have been the most erotic sound I'd ever heard, but I remembered that I'd heard that same sound before… when he was getting off on drinking my blood. Disgusted, I wiped his sticky release from my hand and left the room, commenting about the mess he'd made before I closed the door.

I felt so dirty… probably every bit as dirty as he did right now. I am a monster… and practically a rapist. I forcibly molested him, and I enjoyed it. I just had to remember, even when he looked up at me with those big, dark eyes, that he was not at all the innocent man-child that he appeared to be. In fact, he was the vilest of creatures—a wolf in sheep's clothing. Unfortunately for me, it was difficult to keep that thought cemented in the forefront of my mind when I could hear the creature in question shaking and sniffling on the floor of his room two floors above me.

I supposed I had some shred of humanity left within me, because a small part of me felt sorry for him, or at least responsible for his current condition. The darker, monstrous part of me wanted to make sure he rested and regained his mental facilities so I could begin the next round of torture. I was utterly conflicted. Almost against my will, I crept silently up the stairs. When I reached the closed door to Edward's bedroom, I paused to listen. The soft sounds inside the room had stopped. Carefully, I opened the door and peeked inside. He was on the floor, his hands still bound above him. He had pulled his jeans up to cover himself, but they were still unfastened. When I stepped into the room, a shudder wracked his body, but otherwise he didn't react to my presence.

"Edward?" I said softly. He didn't respond. "I'm going to get you out of these cuffs." Gently, I took hold of one of his arms and stretched open the metal shackle, releasing his wrist from the cuff and putting it down at his side. I repeated the action with the other arm then stepped back to look at him. He still hadn't moved, and his eyes were staring past me, wide and unblinking. I noticed that his eyes were dark—too dark. He needed to hunt.

"Edward?" I tried again, sitting down beside him. "You need to hunt. Come on, it will make you feel better."

Again, he didn't move or indicate that he'd heard me. I didn't really know what to do, but I needed to get him outside and get him to eat. I wasn't sure if vampires could go into shock or not, but he looked to be in some sort of similar state. I recognized that I really shouldn't care if he never moved from this spot again, but the empathetic human part of me did care. And, at the moment, Edward looked more like a sick teenager than a vicious monster.

"I'm just going to get you dressed so we can go outside," I mumbled to his unmoving form as I dug out one of his t-shirts from a dresser drawer. I knelt down beside him and pulled the shirt over his head, pulling his arms through the holes. Pulling him up and propping him against the wall, I gingerly reached to button up his fly, but when my hands reached the buttons of his jeans, he whimpered and pulled away.

At that moment, I felt every bit the monster that I knew I was. "Sssh, I'm not going to hurt you," I reassured him. What did he think I was going to do, molest him? After what I did to him, he had every right to be afraid of me. I swallowed back the shame and spoke again. "It's okay, I won't touch you. I'm just going to fasten up your jeans and then we'll go hunt."

I quickly buttoned up his fly and pulled him up to his feet. He didn't cooperate by standing up, so I awkwardly pulled him over my shoulder and made my way outside. He wasn't too heavy for my supernatural strength, but his much larger frame made carrying him difficult at best.

When we got outside, I felt him take in a deep breath of fresh air, and he seemed to wake up a little. I sat him down on the steps of the front porch, and he remained sitting up on his own. Unsure of what to do, I sat down beside him.

"You look like you're feeling a little better," I said hoarsely, my words echoing in the dark night. Edward just nodded. "Look, I—" I began, but I didn't know how to finish the sentence. I had been about to apologize, just because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, but I didn't think I was really sorry for what I had done to him.

"Don't," he said softly, and I looked at him questioningly. "Don't say you're sorry," he said, his voice stronger this time. He smiled slightly as he turned to face me. "We both know you're not, and that's quite alright."

Again, I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded in acceptance of his words.

"So, shall we hunt?" he asked politely, standing and extending his hand to help me up. I looked at the proffered hand, about to refuse it, but he withdrew it quickly, apparently rethinking the action.

I stood unassisted and we ran together towards the forest, an unspoken and very temporary truce in place.