Taste of Innocence Chapter 3
What the fuck did I do to her? What the fuck is wrong with this chick? She stared at me, her crimson eyes trying to see into my very black soul. Alright, Cullen, she’s just confused. Of course she is. She just woke up from excruciating pain that was preceded by the unequalled pleasure of making love to you. Of course she doesn’t understand what’s happened to her.
Right. I felt better after I realized that she was just a bit disoriented from her change. Who wouldn’t be? I’d had a moment to realize what was happening to me before I passed out. She was clearly too high on me to have realized what the bite to her neck meant. Who could fucking blame her?
“I asked what the fuck did you do to me?” She broke me out of my ruminations with her fierce glare, arms crossed over her heaving breasts. I couldn’t wait to have my hands and tongue on them again. Focus Cullen. Oh yeah, she needed an answer.
“Bella, sweetheart, why don’t you have a seat? I have a lot to tell you.” There, I’d soothe her a little, pamper her like the princess she was and soon she’d see what a fabulous gift I’d bestowed upon her.
“I don’t want a seat, I want to know what you did to me!” she shrieked, her previously sweet voice piercing my skull like a raving banshee. Indeed, what had I done? Still, I decided to be patient with her.
“I have given you the greatest gift in the world.”
“What? An STD? Because whatever the fuck you gave me burned like nothing I’ve ever had before. Do I have to get tested? You said you were clean!” Holy shit, did she seriously think I had an STD? That would have been fucking insulting if it wasn’t so damn hilarious.
I chuckled, I couldn’t help it. And she huffed in reaction. It was really quite adorable, if I was being honest. She’d keep me on my toes for the next century or so. “Who would call an STD a great gift?”
“Some psycho who bites people while having sex with them?” Oh, so she remembered that part as well. Good.
I leaned against the wall. “First of all, I bit you after making love to you. What we did wasn’t just sex. It was an emotional connection that I’ve never had with anyone before. And because of that, I decided to keep you.”
“Keep me? What the fuck do you mean, keep me? I’m not some stray pet you picked up at the pound, Edward. I’m a person!” She raged around the room, flinging her arms, the t-shirt I’d dressed her in riding dangerously high on her supple white thighs. Venom welled in my mouth at the sight. I had to have her soon.
I ran a hand through my hair, unsure of exactly how to explain to her what had happened. Maybe it was just like a ripping off a bandage. Do it quick and painlessly. Then again, where was the fun in that? A little pain begets a lot of pleasure, at least in my world.
“Well, you’re not exactly a person anymore.”
Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to figure out how to respond to that. How I wished I could read her mind. I bet it was just fascinating, like she was. “What the hell does that mean? Of course I’m a person!” She glanced down and took in her barely covered body, gasping in surprise at her state of undress. She grabbed the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her waist.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before.”
“That was before you bit me and gave me an STD.” She was still stuck on that? I burst out laughing, clutching my stomach at the bewildered rage that colored her face. “Why are you laughing at me?” Clearly, Bella needed to work on her sense of humor. I stopped laughing and decided enough was enough.
“I’m laughing because you refuse to actually listen to what I’m telling you.” Her mouth opened to protest and I held up a hand. Surprisingly, she actually shut up to listen. “We made love and yes, I bit you. I did that because I decided to keep you with me forever. Bella, I’m a vampire and now you are too.” There, I’d told her and now we could get on with the celebration. A little sex, some blood, a lot more sex and all would be well.
She stared at me and then backed away slowly until she reached the corner of the room. I watched with interest as she cowered there. “Oh shit, you’re one of those escaped patients from the mental institution. Bellevue, right?” She thought I was crazy? What the fuck was wrong with this chick? Here I was being honest and she assumed that I was insane.
“No, I’m not an escaped mental patient and neither are you. I am a vampire. As in, an immortal being that lives off of blood. And so are you. You’re welcome.” Surely she’d get it now and we could get on with the sex. The way she was staring at me with those bright red eyes made me want to tackle her to the ground and fuck her senseless. Confusion and fear were a surprising turn on.
“Listen, Edward,” she spoke softly, as if afraid she was going to arouse my ire by screaming again. She was arousing something alright but it wasn’t my ire. “I get that you think you’re a vampire and it’s very sweet that you want to keep me with you forever.” Her eyes darted around the room. “I, um, really like you too and once you’ve seen the doctor and gotten some good strong medication maybe we can revisit this thing we have, okay?”
Okay, seriously, this girl was fucking dense but adorable at the same time. How the hell was that possible? By this point I generally would be running the other direction but she was so cute. Since when the fuck did I do cute? Maybe I did need to go to Bellevue. I took a step toward her and she cringed further into the wall but there was nowhere left for her to go.
“Bella, love, I swear to you that I am not crazy and neither are you. We are vampires. Why do you think that you leapt out of bed and sucked Jacob’s blood?” I gestured to the drained corpse on the other side of the bed. I really had to get him the hell out of my house, his presence continued to annoy me despite his being dead. Stalker asshole.
“Blood? I sucked someone’s blood? I hate blood! I would never do that. Oh my God, did you drug me? GHB? Acid? I’ve read about those and they can make you do fucked up things.” I rolled my eyes again.
“First I gave you a STD and then I drugged you? Anything else? Perhaps I pimped you out to the neighborhood to score my next fix? Jesus Christ, Bella, I told you what the fuck happened. Wrap your head around it.” I was quite done with this bullshit. It wasn’t endearing anymore.
“Wrap my head around it? You tell me you’re some kind of monster and you made me one and I’m just supposed to accept it and what? Skip down the fucking street holding your hand? I want to go home!” She was shouting again, her pretty face contorted with anger.
I sighed and glanced around the room, finally finding my answer. “Bella, look in the fucking mirror. Go ahead; I won’t touch you as you walk past me.”
She eyed me warily but slowly crept away from the wall, giving me a wide berth as she scooted past me. I stayed against the wall and tried to look as nonthreatening as I possibly could. Bella approached the mirror and I sat back and waited to enjoy the show. Maybe she’d finally get it. Seriously, if she continued to be brainless I was going to have re-think this whole eternity thing.
She finally made her way in front of the mirror and let out a gasp of surprise. “My eyes! What the fuck happened to my eyes?” She didn’t turn away, staring at herself in morbid fascination. I walked up behind her and took both of us in. We made a truly stunning pair if I did say so myself. The fun we would have! I pictured Bella luring disgusting rapists into a dark alley, them thinking they were going to have their way with her. We’d tear them to shreds, draining their bodies and then fuck next to their empty corpses. God I wanted her. Perhaps I would take her right next to Jacob, it would be the closest he’d ever fucking get to her, alive or dead.
“I told you, your eyes are like mine now.” She looked up at my reflection, seeing that my eyes were as red as hers were. She shook her head but I could see the scales falling away from her eyes, finally. It was about fucking time.
“You weren’t lying?” Her voice still held hope but her eyes showed none.
“No.” I pushed her hair off her neck and showed her the spot where I’d made her mine. I bent forward and pressed my lips to it, touching her skin again at last. Fuck she still smelled good and tasted even better. She watched our reflections, not moving away from me but not touching me back.
“Why?”
“Why what?” I moved up her neck, kissing softly along her jaw. Her body trembled below mine. She wasn’t indifferent, that was for damn sure.
She let out a strangled whimper and jerked her head away from me. “Why did you make me what you are?”
“A vampire. You can fucking say it, Bella. It’s what we are.”
“Fine, then, why did you make me into a fucking vampire?” She still didn’t face me, choosing to address the mirror instead of me.
Why indeed? I didn’t really have an answer to that question. I just had. I wanted to keep her. Maybe it was as simple as that. I focused on the wall behind her as I answered. “There was…a connection between us. Something I’ve never felt before. I wanted to explore it.” That was an explanation and it was actually true. I didn’t understand it, it just was.
She turned to face me then, her hands on her hips as she glowered up at me. There she went with the whole “cute” thing again. She was killing me. “You wanted to explore it? So you basically fucking killed me and turned me into a monster to explore it?” She punctuated her words by poking me in the chest.
I smirked at her again. “Yes, that pretty much sums it up.”
“Why couldn’t you have explored it with me as a human? Why did you have to make me into a soulless monster?” Damn it, there we went with the whole evil, soulless thing again. Who said being a vampire was evil? Killing might be evil, I suppose, but was it really better to let murderers roam the streets? Fuck it, I was so not getting into a philosophical discussion with her right now. I wanted to fuck, not talk shit to death.
“Would you have really been okay with having a vampire boyfriend, Bella?”
“Well, no.”
“Exactly. So we couldn’t have explored anything unless we did it my way. Which we did.”
“Which you did. I didn’t get any say in matters, did I? You just took me and bit me!”
“You liked it well enough at the time.” She’d moaned and climaxed several times, after all.
She pushed me and I fell back a step. “You didn’t give me a damn choice in the matter, Edward. You swept me off my feet and then while I was all hazy from the sex you bit me! Did you not think that I should have some say in whether or not I became one of the undead?”
I shrugged. What was there to say to that? I hadn’t considered her feelings on the matter. That just wasn’t my style. I saw, I wanted, I took. She didn’t understand just how special it was that I’d given her immortality. “I didn’t really plan to do it, Bella. I had you here and fully intended to just fuck and kill you but then you were so interesting and there was that connection and I couldn’t hear you and I just had to keep you around.”
“Wait a minute, you brought me here just to fuck and kill me? All that sweet talk about liking me and listening to me talk about my parents was just you filling time before you took my life?” She was pissed now. Way to go Edward, you fucked up royally.
I threw up my hands in surrender. “Look, initially I planned that, yes. But the more you talked, the more I liked you and then I just wanted you for the sake of wanting you. Then I started wanting to keep you. Fuck, Bella, I’ve never wanted to keep anyone before. Don’t you see what a fucking honor it is that out of the hundreds of thousands of people I’ve come across in my lifetime, you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to keep and get to know better?”
“Honor?” Fuck, she was back to the shrieking. Why in the hell had I changed her again? Stupid bullshit connection. I had clearly been imagining things. I couldn’t feel a connection to a fucking harpy. “I’m supposed to be honored that you killed me?” Her head was shaking side to side and her little curls were bouncing. I watched in fascination and wanted to reach out and wind one around my fingers. I would have done it if I didn’t fear she’d rip my fucking hand off.
I rubbed my face with both my hands instead of touching her. “No, you’re supposed to be honored that I kept you. Do you know what kind of gift immortality is? Nothing can ever fucking hurt you. You’ll never get sick. You’ll be a fucking goddess walking the earth. You can do anything now, Bella. How is that not an honor?”
Her glare could have melted steel. “So tell me something, Edward. Now that I’m dead and all, can I have children? Can I have a career and get married and watch my family grow old?”
Children? She wanted children? Why the fuck would she want grubby, loud, annoying children? “No, you know your body will never change. You will stay just as you are now, young and beautiful and free of stretch marks and wrinkles and gray hair, which annoying little kids would give you if you had any. You’re welcome.” I snickered internally, waiting for the fireworks to go off at that statement. I was taking perverse pleasure in watching her get pissed at me, plus it made me hard as a rock.
Her nostrils flared and I had to force myself not to laugh as my cock tried to tear its way out my jeans. “I’m welcome? Welcome? I don’t remember thanking you, Edward. Maybe I should go to the Hallmark store and see if they have a fucking card that says thanks for killing me, love you bunches!” Her voice rose in pitch on every word until she was screaming at the top of her lungs. Thank God this place was soundproofed.
“Perhaps we can start our own card company for all those special occasions that Hallmark leaves out, huh?” She reared her arm back to punch me but I caught her hand in mine. She didn’t yet know how not to telegraph her moves. I’d teach her in time, maybe.
There was quite a tiger lurking beneath that kitten exterior and I’d unleashed the beast when I bit her. I didn’t know if I should thank myself or kick my own ass. I waivered on that every second that she spoke. I wanted her like I’d never wanted anyone else before but I also wanted to throttle her and hightail it the hell out of the state. I couldn’t do that though, she was my responsibility now.
She yanked her hand back and slumped back on the wall, the fight seeming to drain out of her. “I want to go home.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
Since I thought I could get away with it now, when she was apparently calming, I reached out and stroked her cheek, absorbing the buzz I felt when my fingertips touched her silky skin. “You are home now, Bella.” Her eyes flashed open at my words and she jerked her head away from me.
“What do you mean? I can’t live here. I live with Alice and I’m sure she’s looking for me by now. And Charlie! He must be frantic. How long have I been gone?”
“Three days.”
“Three days?” Panic laced her tone and she started to push off the wall but I held her there. “I have to go and let them know that I’m alright! Let go of me, Edward!”
I tried not to show my own panic that rose up at the thought of her leaving me. Where the hell did that come from? Why did I care so damn much? I couldn’t let her know just how strongly I felt so I gave her my patented smirk. “Alright, you can go see them. I’m surprised, though, I really thought you liked your friends.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Of course I like my friends. I love them! That’s why I have to let them know that I’m alright.”
“Bella, the instant you got into a room with one of them you’d rip out their throats and drain their blood. It would happen before you even consciously thought about it.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Why would I do something like that? I could never hurt someone I loved. I couldn’t even hurt someone I hated.” I laughed, of course she could.
“You could and would. You’re a vampire now. Do you not realize what vampires eat? Hello, you know I bit you.”
“But you didn’t bite them and you waited until you got me alone. Surely you have some control.”
I rolled my eyes. She’s new, Edward, and just a little slow when it comes to grasping the mechanics of vampirism. Be patient. I took a deep breath. “Yes, I have control because I have been a vampire for over ninety years. You’ve been one for an hour. It takes months to control your bloodlust.”
She stared at me and I swear if she was capable she would be crying. “So I can’t see them anytime soon.”
You can’t see them ever again. I didn’t tell her that though, she didn’t need to hear it now. “No.”
“Can I at least call and tell them I’m alright?”
“No, if you did that they’d start looking for you. I’ve taken care of it.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Taken care of it how?”
I chuckled at the memory of dim Jacob and my machinations to make him look like the guilty party in Bella’s disappearance. “I made it look like you ran off with a boy.” Or that he killed you. You don’t need to know that though.
She snorted. “A boy, right. Who would believe that? Everybody knows I don’t date. No boys are interested in me.”
I pressed against her and she hissed as she felt my very obvious arousal. “I’m very interested in you.” I ran my tongue over her jaw and down to her ear as she writhed against me.
Her hands reached up and gripped my hair, holding me to her as I traced her face with my lips. “Okay, I amend that statement. No human boys are interested in me.” Her voice was breathless as I rubbed my cock over her thigh.
I moved my lips to the other side of her face and repeated the process, nibbling her jaw, her ear, her cheekbone. “That’s not what I hear.”
“What?” I smiled at her inability to follow the conversation. I had her now.
“Rose told me that there was some loser that asked you out all the time.” I bent my knees and pressed my dick up against her pussy; the only barrier between us now was my jeans and that would be rectified momentarily. She moaned at the pressure and tightened her hold on my hair. I winced at the pain and pulled back to stare into her dazed eyes.
She shook her head to try to clear it as I ran my hands down her body, to the hem of my t-shirt. I pushed the sheet to the floor and started to inch the shirt up slowly, trailing my fingers over the tops of her thighs, heading to the promise land.
“You mean Jacob?” I growled as his name passed her perfect lips. She should never say his name. He was nothing to her, nothing to us; nothing but a drained corpse that is. I nodded, unable to speak through my anger at hearing her speak of him. “Yeah I guess he liked me but I wasn’t interested in him.” Of course not, he was a douche. A stalkery, wussy douche. Bella had much better taste than that, after all she was very interested me. I could smell her arousal and feel the wetness dripping down her thighs. “It figures that the first boy that I want is a vampire.” I chuckled and pressed my lips to her neck. “I would have been better off just saying yes to Jacob.” I pulled back and stared at her in outrage.
“What the fuck did you just say?” She flinched at the rage in my voice.
“I…I was just kidding.”
I glared at her. “Are you saying you would prefer that useless dog to me?”
She shook her head. “No. If I did, I would have gone out with him one of the hundred times he asked me. But I’d still be human if I dated him.” I was slightly mollified at her continued rejection of the loser so I kissed her. Her lips were still beneath mine for a second but then she responded. I knew she was still pissed at me but she was helpless against me as I was against her.
I abandoned her lips to kiss her forehead and laughed lightly. “I guess, technically, he did feed you dinner. So maybe he got his date after all.” Not quite what he’d fantasized about but he should be flattered that he was her first meal.
“What do you mean?” Bella lifted one of her legs and wrapped it around my waist, pushing her pussy against my denim clad cock. I groaned and thrust into her as her lips pressed against my neck, drawn to my scar as I was to hers. I wished she was able to mark me as I had her.
I brushed her hair back and kissed her hungrily. She met my passion with her own. This was right. I returned my hands to the bottom of her shirt, ready to remove the barriers in our way and fuck her right there against the wall. Her hands moved to my shirt and she started to pull it up, I broke off our kiss so she could remove it. A laugh of happiness bubbled out of me; delight in the two of us and excitement at her apparent acceptance of the life I’d given her. My muscles bunched under her tiny, tentative hands as she explored the planes of my chest. “What did you mean about dinner, Edward?” She bit her lip and kept her eyes trained on my body as she moved her hands over me.
I smiled at the memory of her leaping out of bed and sucking the life out of Jacob. “I mean that you had him for dinner. He was your very first meal. Do you not remember?” I shouldn’t be surprised; she’d been rather confused from the moment she’d woken up. Of course she remembered me and that was all that had mattered. She dragged her eyes away from my chest and looked at me in confusion.
I gestured over to the corner of the room, where she’d kicked Jacob’s body out of her way to yell at me. God that was fucking hot. She stiffened in my arms and tried to pull away but I held fast. “That’s Jacob?”
“Who else do you know that has long black hair and steroid muscles and no brain?” Why the hell were we still talking about him when I could be pounding my cock inside of her right now? Bella began to squirm and I pushed her all the way back into the wall to grind against her. “Come on, Bella, he was the first of what will be many kills. We have far more interesting things to do than discuss your former stalker.”
She stared at me. “You’re saying that I killed him?”
“Of course you did. It was the first thing you did when you woke up. It’s okay that you don’t remember, the bloodlust takes over that first time. Your next kill will be far more memorable.” I would teach her to savor her meals. I leaned forward to kiss her again but she stiff armed me and held me back. “What the fuck?”
“You’re telling me that I did that? I killed someone? Not only that, but someone I actually know?” Damn it, she was pissed off yet again. What the fuck was her problem?
“Bella, your mood swings are giving me whiplash. We’ve been through this shit. You are a vampire. Vampires eat humans. You ate one. The end. Now can we get back to the sex portion of our day?”
“No, we cannot get back to the sex portion of our fucking day. You just told me I killed a man. A man I know. How in the hell am I supposed to deal with that?” I laughed as she referred to Jacob as a man, she hadn’t seen him crying and pissing himself like a little girl. She shoved me and I wasn’t prepared for it so I flew across the room, crashing into the opposite wall and causing a huge crack to form. Her eyes widened at the sight of the damage she could now inflict. Fuck that was hot, and annoying. What was it always a mix of shit with her?
Patience, I reminded myself. It was working for you for a minute there. “Bella, sweetheart, you have to try not to be so hard on yourself. You’re a vampire now and you just acted upon your nature. It was instinct. I’ll teach you to control it but you needed to feed when you first woke up, we all do. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“I killed someone, Edward!” And we’re back to the yelling. I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I really didn’t want to damage the house any further.
I kept speaking in the calm, rational voice that most women found soothing. “You will have to learn to live with that. You’ll kill a lot of people in your lifetime.” She opened her mouth to no doubt start another tirade so I hurried on. “Don’t worry, love, you have me. I can read minds so we’ll only kill the dregs of society, the bad people.”
She crossed her arms and glared at me. “Jacob wasn’t a bad person.” The hell he wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t a murderer but he was an annoying stalker fuck who deserved to die for even looking at her. “I wasn’t a bad person.” Okay, she had me there.
“Jacob was…convenient. I needed some way to explain your disappearance and when Rose told me about him, it seemed right. I made it look like he’d taken you. He was already stalking you, so that wasn’t hard.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, depriving me of the tantalizing view. “You keep calling him a stalker, why?”
I threw up my hands. “Because he was! Do you know what I found when I went into his room? He had one of your scarves stashed in his closet.”
She shrugged. “That’s hardly evidence of anything.”
“As I told you, I can read minds. I read his and saw a memory of him watching you change in your dorm room. Did you put on a free show for him?” The thought of that had me seeing red.
“Of course not!”
“Well then, stalker.” She didn’t look entirely convinced but at least she wasn’t yelling. She should not mourn his death.
“And me?” Fuck, she wasn’t going to like this.
I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my hands through my hair. “I got tired of all the tainted blood I was drinking so I decided to take someone pure and innocent.” I peeked over at her and was not at all surprised to see that she was angry as hell.
“And I just happened to be the lucky girl who stumbled across your path? Jesus, why does this surprise me? Typical Bella! I can’t walk in a straight line, can’t even talk to a boy without blushing my fool head off, can’t do anything physical without hurting myself…of course I would be the one that stumbled across the vigilante vampire who was having an off night!” She was pacing again, gesturing wildly and sending that t-shirt riding further up her body. Fuck she was tormenting me.
I bit back a laugh; it was rather bad luck on her part when I thought about it. But still, she belonged with me. “Bella, even if I hadn’t been having an off night, as you so dubbed it, I would have wanted you. You looked at me with those big brown eyes, innocence just shining out of you. Then I got you alone and you were distrustful and sarcastic but still so naïve and perfect. I had to have you.” She stopped pacing but stood just out of my reach.
“I don’t know what to do with this, Edward. I want you. I know you know that.” I reached for her but she stepped away. “I’m so angry at you for taking me away from my family and my friends. I’m angry that you chose to end my life and didn’t explain things to me first. You never know, in time, I might have actually chosen to be with you of my own free will. You took that away from me.” Well, fuck, when she put it that way it did sound bad. Why did she have to focus on the negative?
“Bella, I understand you have valid reasons to be upset with me. But I swear to you, in time you will learn to love this life. Think of all that we can do and see. I can take you anywhere in the world. We have no one to answer to for anything we say or do. The world is out there for the taking and I want to give it to you. I’ve never shared myself or my life with anyone before. I really meant it to be a gift.” And now I sounded like a fucking pussy. She was turning me into a fumbling human fucktard. I was probably absorbing douchitude from Jacob’s corpse.
She watched me for a full minute before nodding. “Maybe in time I will think it is one. It might take awhile.”
“We have lots of it.”
She sighed and sat down next to me. I started to put my arm around her waist but she shoved it away. Apparently sex was off the table. Fuck me and my big fucking mouth. And fuck Jacob. This was his fault. Cockblocker.
“So you’ll teach me to control myself so I can be around humans again someday.”
“Yes, and I’ll show you how to hunt and pick out all your prey for you. Fuck, Bella, it was so hot watching you sink your teeth into Jacob’s neck.” She winced but I continued on. “Wait until you’re truly aware and can taste the hot blood pulsing down your throat. It’s the most magnificent taste in the world and it will turn you on like nobody’s fucking business.” I smirked at her. “I’ll be right there to take advantage of that fact too.”
She shook her head and stared me dead in the eye. “I’m not going to kill people, Edward. You’re going to have to find some other way to feed me.” What the fuck?
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