The Cocky and the Cougar, Chapter Seven - The Pizza

Chapter 7 ~ The Pizza

Victoria stood behind him, looking at us with a small, arrogant smile on her face.

"Well, I guess I know now where your tastes lay, Edward." She looked me up and down, a slight sneer on her face. "I must say, I'm a bit surprised."

"Hello, Victoria." Thankfully, Edward was able to speak. I was overcome with a blush and now looking at the ground. "I was just saying goodnight to Bella here."

She chuckled and the sound reverberated throughout the parking garage she stood in front of.

"That was some goodnight," she said.

"Yes, well..." That was all Edward could think to say.

"Yes," she said sarcastically. "Well ... I'm off now. I have some phone calls to make before it gets too late." 

Edward's hand ran through his hair. "Goodnight, then."

My eyes remained trained on the ground as I heard her walk away, back in the direction she had come from, which I found odd. I was mortified and more than a little nauseous.

As I stood there wondering if and how what Victoria had seen would be relayed to Carlisle before I even got into the office on Monday, I heard Edward chuckling. I looked up at him and he had a hand in his hair. As he met my inquiring gaze, he started to laugh harder.

"I can't believe you think this is funny." I stared at him.

"Bella, how can you not think this is funny? I mean, what a moron! I was just saying goodnight to Bella here." 

I had to grin as he mocked himself. That truly had been the understatement of the year. He moved toward me and put his hands on my shoulders. 

"It's embarrassing, Bella, but it's not the end of the world. What's she gonna do? Tell our parents?"

"Carlisle?" I grumbled.

"If he finds out, he finds out." He lifted my chin with his finger, so that I looked him in the eye. "We weren't doing anything wrong, Bella."

"I know.” I sighed and stood up straight. “It's just ... embarrassing." I moved around to the driver's side of my truck.

"You're so embarrassed to be seen with me?" He was teasing me, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

"The Director of Sales? Absolutely." I had my door unlocked and I opened it, stepping up onto the running board and looking at him over the top of the cab. "Edward Masen? Maybe not so much."

"Maybe, huh?" His hands flew to his chest. "Be still my heart! I got a maybe!" 

He smirked at me and waited while I started the engine before he turned to walk back toward his own car. I noticed he lit up a cigarette as he walked away.

***

I woke to the sound of my phone's alarm, telling me I had a text message. I stretched and grabbed my glasses before reading the message, which made my face brighten up in a smile. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'd already been thinking about him.

That was some kiss

I thought for a moment before typing my reply. Who is this?

In mere moments, I read his next message. How many people did you kiss last night?

Are we talking tongue here?

Yes…

Two … wait, maybe it was just one.

You're unsure?

Well, one of them is a little hazy … he caught me by surprise and I'm not at all sure that was a tongue. I smiled as I typed out the rest of my reply. And … indeed

? Indeed?

I rolled my eyes. Indeed it was … quite a kiss

Oh. Yes. Indeed.

You know a thing or two about kissing ... You know, for a child. I couldn't believe I sat there grinning like a school girl, sending flirtatious morning text messages to a cute boy. My heart lifted at the realization.

I'll have u know I have been out of nappies for several years.

I lifted my eyebrows. Hmm... was my reply.

Hmm?

Well, now you have me picturing you sans nappies.

It was a few minutes before I received his reply and I began to get nervous. Did that last message just make me sound like a child molester?

Finally, he said: u know u don't have to just imagine me nekkid. I can be there in fifteen minutes.

How do u know how long it will take? U don't know where I live.

It was again a couple of minutes before he replied and I wondered what he was doing. Which, of course, made my mind wander to places it shouldn't be going.

Wherever u are, I will make sure it only takes me 15 minutes, no matter what. I'm like Dominoes. I guarantee my delivery time.

I chuckled. It only takes you fifteen minutes? That doesn't sound all that promising to me...

It will only take me fifteen minutes to get TO you! I will spend far more time GETTING to you.

I laughed and received another text from him before I could reply. Dammit! was all it said and I quirked an eyebrow at my phone, in question. What the heck did that mean? I had begun to type him another message, when my phone rang in my hand.

"Well, good morning," I said into the phone, smiling.

"I figured I may as well call you," Edward said. "My fingers were starting to cramp. Besides, there is too much room for misinterpretation when it comes to texting, as we have both now discovered."

I chuckled.

"So what time am I coming over for dinner?" he asked.

"Uh ... Say what?"

"Dinner. Our bet, remember?"

"Yes, I remember our bet and I remember that neither of us won."

He sighed. "I thought we'd been through this and decided we'd have dinner tonight, regardless."

"Yeah,” I chuckled into the phone. “In your dreams that's what we decided."

"So, what? You have something better to do?"

"What if I do? It's rather insulting of you to think I'd have a Saturday night free on such short notice, you know."

I heard his soft chuckle. "Are you busy tonight, Bella?"

I paused before sighing and telling him the truth. "No. But that's not the point."

He was already chuckling again. "Tell you what—you don't have to make dinner for me. I'll bring the wine, you buy the pizza."

I paused again, before relenting. It was what I wanted anyway. "Okay. But I get to choose what's on the pizza. And none of that gross Chicago-style, either. I am thin-crust, New York pizza all the way, baby."

"Okay, fine” He laughed “Whatever. I'm not really coming over for the pizza anyway."

"Oh? You've heard about my extensive DVD collection?"

"It is world-renowned, you know." 

We chuckled for a moment before he said, "So seven o'clock?"

"Sounds good."

"Okay, so I'll see you then." His voice had that I'm-going-to-hang-up-now tone to it.

"Uh—Edward?"

His voice sounded like he was smiling. "Yes?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Um ... I'm really looking forward to seeing you, Bella."

"You're such a dork.” I laughed. “Don't you need my address?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I do."

I was still chuckling as I gave him my address and we said our goodbyes.

And then I realized that Edward Masen was going to be in my house in a mere ten hours and I leapt from my bed.

You would think that ten hours would be ample time to clean a small, single-story, two-bedroom house such as mine and still have ample time left over to shower and make oneself beautiful. It's not like my house was dirty in the first place. It just wasn't company-clean.

The sheets, of course, went into the washer immediately and crisp, fresh, clean, cotton ones went on—my favorite, softest sheets.

You know, just in case.

My favorite room in my home had always been the sun room. One of the things Jacob and I had worked well together on was the remodeling of the 1929 Craftsman-style home we purchased together and renovated throughout the course of our marriage. The sun room ran the expanse of the front of the house and served as both living room and dining room. We had lined the entire inside wall with book shelves, complete with a library ladder, on wheels, so I could reach the highest shelves. The only breaks in the wall of shelves were the hallway which led to the bed — and bathrooms — and the passthrough off the dining area to the kitchen. We were both avid readers and Jacob was a Professor in American Lit., after all. Even once his books were removed from the shelves, it hadn't taken me long to fill them up again. In truth, I'd been happy for the extra room. Interspersed with the books were framed photos, pieces of pottery, works of art, a few Hopi Kachina dolls and mementos from my life and my travels. I would often just sit in one of the comfortable chairs or on the sofa in the room and look at the items on those shelves, remembering Charlie and the fun times Rose and Alice and I had shared and wonder over how lucky I had been. The sun room was the room that made me feel that this house was my home. It was comfortable and cozy and I felt surrounded by all that was important to me.

But those shelves were a bitch to dust. It took forever and by the time I was finished I was drenched in sweat and exhausted from running up and down the ladder repeatedly. The good news was, though, that I was almost finished with the house. Once I'd swept the hardwood floors and rugs, I was ready to get in the shower. Forty minutes of scrubbing, exfoliating, shaving and moisturizing later, I felt like a new woman.

I decided to keep the night casual and slipped into a pair of Levis and an old Bruce Springsteen concert tee. The shirt was just a tad too tight across the chest, since I'd not been fully developed when I first wore it, but I didn't think that would be a detriment to an evening spent with Edward Masen. I was tempted to find a way to wear my lucky hair comb, but it just didn't work with the whole "casual" vibe I was going for. I did wear a sexy pair of navy blue, lacy panties and a matching demi-cup bra. Again—just in case. I put on a little mascara and some clear lip gloss and left my feet bare. I figured if he thought he was prepared to date a thirty-eight year-old woman, there wasn't much need trying to cover up all the flaws he was going to see eventually anyway. Besides, I thought as I surveyed myself in the full-length mirror in my bedroom, I still looked pretty damn good. After I laid several DVDs out on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, I took a deep breath and tried to relax for the first time all day. It was 6:43.

I hadn't even realized that I'd closed my eyes and I was being jarred awake by the sound of knocking on my front door. I looked over to see the outline of Edward standing on my porch, obscured by the frosted glass of the door. I took a deep breath as I stood and walked over to let him in.

He smiled winningly up at me from the bottom of my porch steps and I felt my face melt in a smile of my own. He, too, wore blue jeans, which he had topped with a long-sleeved, blue, pullover shirt that looked incredibly soft and I just wanted to run my hands all over it for about twenty minutes or so.

"Hi," he said, adorably.

"Hi." Fuck. Was I blushing again? This was so ridiculous.

I stepped to the side to allow him to pass through the door. "Come on in, please." I noticed then that he carried a bunch of Gerber Daisies in varying colors of yellows, reds and oranges. My smile widened at the sight.

He turned back toward me as I closed the door, still smiling as he handed me the flowers. "I brought these for you."

I grabbed the flowers and buried my face in them. "Did somebody tell you these are my favorite?"

"What? No." He looked nervous as he ran a hand ran through his hair. "I'm glad you like them, though." He held up the bag that he'd been holding in his other hand. "I brought two bottles. I don't know about you, but I am definitely gonna need to start drinking before we even order the pizza."

I looked at him for a moment, almost startled by what he'd said. Then I broke into a huge smile and started to chuckle. I took the bag from his hand and motioned with my head for him to follow me to the kitchen. "I'm with you. Come on."

I put everything on the counter when we entered the kitchen and retrieved two wine glasses and a cork screw, setting them down as well. I pulled a decanter from a shelf and noticed that Edward had already started uncorking one of the bottles. We worked in silence, I filling a vase with water and placing the daisies inside while Edward first emptied the bottle of wine into the decanter then filled our glasses from it.

Before I could reach for my glass, I felt his hand on my neck. I barely had time to register what was happening before his lips were on mine, covering them. I sighed as he softly sucked my lower lip between his before pulling his face away slightly.

"Springsteen, huh?" He grinned.

"What?" I was a bit breathless.

"Springsteen.” He looked down at my chest for a brief moment. “Your shirt."

He let go of my neck and I almost staggered back, away from him. 

"Yes, Springsteen. It was my first rock concert. I was like eight."

"Yeah, The Boss." He took both of our glasses in hand as he rolled his eyes. "Working Man's Hero and all that crap. Whatever."

I gasped. "Oh, you have no idea." I pulled at the hem of my shirt. "This was on 'The River' tour. It was life-changing." I grabbed my flowers in my hands, wrapping one arm around the vase and we moved back toward the sun room. I placed the flowers on my dining table.

"Thank you for the daisies," I said, watching Edward as he walked along the book shelves, peering intently at them. "They really are my favorite."

"You're welcome," he said. He picked up a piece of black-on-black pottery I'd bought from an artist at San Ildephonso Pueblo in New Mexico, examining it closely before he replaced it on the shelf. "So who took you to the concert?"

"Huh?"

He barely glanced at me, still looking closely at my things. "The Springsteen concert. You said you were eight. Who takes a kid like that to a rock concert? I think I was fourteen before I ever went to a concert."

"Oh," I smiled. "My Aunt. Karen. She was the coolest."

"Aunt Karen?"

I nodded and walked toward him. "She was ten years older than me and she was just the most awesome chick ever. You know, like, she listened to the coolest punk rock music and she played guitar in a band and she stayed out late. She always had the cutest boyfriends. She was the one who introduced me to all the good music and the best movies. She would scare the crap out of me by making me watch these weird, Italian horror movies. They would totally give me nightmares, but I would watch them because if she thought they were cool they must be cool. She taught me to play poker, too."

He raised his eyebrows and turned toward me so he faced me fully. He handed my glass of wine to me.

"Of course, back then it wasn't Hold 'Em. You know, we played real poker like five card draw or seven card stud."

"I've played real poker before." He chuckled.

"Well, wonder of wonders..." I mumbled, with a grin.

He raised his glass toward me. "Well, here's to Aunt Karen then."

I raised my glass in a toast, smiling.

"So where is Aunt Karen nowadays? Still back in Washington?"

My smile faltered and I felt bad. I knew he didn't know she was dead and now he was going to feel uncomfortable. "Well, actually, she died when I was seventeen."

His jaw dropped open and I immediately felt worse. "I'm sorry, Bella."

"It's okay, Edward.” I put a hand on his arm. “It was a long time ago."

"How did she die?"

I looked down at my wine glass. "Car accident. The guy she was with had been drinking and he got them into a head-on collision."

"Wow," he said heavily. "That sucks."

"Yes, it does."

I took another drink of wine, wondering how to gracefully change the subject when Edward broke the somewhat awkward silence.

"You've got a lot of Hemingway here." He nodded toward the book shelf in front of us.

"Oh, yes, I do. Most of these were my dad's, actually. I never used to like Hemingway, but I've started to reread some of these lately and I'm having a change of heart, I think."

"Really?" He raised his eyebrows.

I nodded. "I still find him a sexist most of the time, but I like the way he writes. I like his economy with words."

"I do too," he said, fingering a copy of The Sun Also Rises. "Especially when you compare him to, say, Fitzgerald and all of his wordy, lush descriptions of every last thing, you come to appreciate the way Hemingway says so much in relatively few words. He seems much more ... American to me, maybe. Simple, direct. Kind of from the gut. I mean, not that I don't like Fitzgerald, but I think I prefer Hemingway." He grinned. "Or maybe it depends on what day you ask me."

I gaped at him. If my panties hadn't already been wet just from his appearance on my doorstep, they were certainly so now.

He smiled, noticing my gaping jaw. "What?"

"You ... read?" I asked, the astonishment obvious in my voice.

His smile widened and he chuckled. "Yes, I read. Is that so odd?"

I shook my head to clear it of the daze I was in. "Frankly, yes. Nobody reads anymore."

"You do, apparently."

"Well, sure, I do, but..." I waved a hand in the air, dismissing the subject. "I am happy to be wrong on this matter." I raised my glass to him and took another sip. "Shall we sit down? It's going be a long night if we spend the whole time on our feet."

He looked down at the DVDs as he sat on the sofa. "So what movies do you have here?"

I waved a hand over the selection as if I were Vanna White, flipping letters. "So I have spread out an array of films for you to choose from. I don't really know yet what kind of movies you like, so I tried to put out a varied selection for you. Action, Comedy, Horror, Small Indie Art Film, etcetera." I picked up the first movie. "Manhattan. It's funny, it's beautifully filmed and it's not quite so overly romantic as to be considered a chick flick ... Die Hard. Filled with action, but written well enough that I won't get bored by a bunch of bombs and guns and explosions. Plus, Bruce Willis had a nice ass back then."

He raised his eyebrows and took the DVD gently from my hand, moving it to the sofa behind him and stuffing it between the cushions. "Yeah. I don't think we'll be watching this one."

I chuckled. "Okay, so then we have A Room with a View. Totally a chick flick, but I don't know how many brownie points you're looking to earn tonight. Speaking of funky Italian horror flicks, I have Suspiria."

He took that one from my hand, too, looking at the back cover. "What the hell is Suspiria?"

"'What the hell is Suspiria'? Edward, do you like horror movies?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, you know. I liked Halloween and stuff, but I'm not, like, an aficionado."

"Oh, yes. I have that movie, too. But anyway, if not tonight, I will show you Suspiria some time. It's awesome. Beautifully filmed, weird and it kind of reminds me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Only bloodier and with a strange dubbing of English over Italian-speaking actors. And no actual dwarves. Oh and we could discuss the unsettling soundtrack for days."

Edward had an odd look on his smiling face, as he took another drink from his wine glass. I gave him a questioning look for a moment, but when he didn't say anything, I moved on.

"3:10 to Yuma. I actually have both versions of this movie, but I prefer the newer one with Russell Crowe. Pulp Fiction, because who doesn't like Tarantino? Miller's Crossing, because it's my favorite Cohen Brothers movie; and Chasing Amy because it's funny and there's lots of talk about Lesbian sex."

He again raised his eyebrows at me and I shrugged. 

"Hey, I know how you guys like the lesbian sex." 

He laughed.

"I have other movies, of course," I said, starting to get up from my seat.

"Please, no.” He held up a hand. “I already have too many choices. My mind is boggled."

I laughed. "Okay, but I have one request." 

At yet another raise of his eyebrows, I continued. 

"We need to order pizza sooner than later because I haven't eaten all day and will be drunk after one glass of wine if we don't."

"Hmm ... Getting you drunk may work to my advantage, though." 

The hand not holding his wine snuck out to tickle my ribs and I squirmed and giggled, pushing it away. He chuckled. 

"Order whenever you want to order, it's fine by me."

I jumped up and grabbed the cordless phone from it's usual position. "What do you like on your pizza?" I asked him.

"I thought you were choosing the toppings."

I rolled my eyes. "I do know how to be polite, Edward."

"Okay.” He grinned. “Well, I usually eat essentially everything. No anchovies, but other than that, I'm open. The more meat the better, I say."

"Ha!" I said, almost under my breath. "That's what she said."

A smile slowly crept over his face. "Did you just say what I think–?"

I grinned at him and waved toward the DVD player underneath the television. "Put in the DVD while I call, okay?"

"Okay. Just don't get something girlie like pineapple. Who eats pineapple on their pizza?"

I ignored that, since I happened to like pineapple on my pizza, and walked into the kitchen so I could order without feeling the weight of Edward's eyes on me. When I came back into the room, I brought the decanter full of Cabernet with me and he was sitting on the sofa with his shoes kicked off, his long legs stretched in front of him. He turned around when he heard me entering the room.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, lifting his feet from the floor. "You don't have any on, so I figured—when in Rome, you know."

"It's fine, of course.” I topped off both of our glasses before setting the decanter down on a magazine on the coffee table. “So what movie did you pick?"

He patted the seat next to him. "Sit down and find out."

I sat down and curled my feet underneath me, smiling. His arm rested on the back of the sofa, behind me, and I could feel his body heat radiating from him.

When I heard the beginning strains of Gershwin, followed shortly by Woody Allen's narrative voice over beautiful shots of the Manhattan skyline, I gasped. "You picked Manhattan!" I turned to find him smiling almost as widely as I was.

"That I did," he said.

"Did you pick this just to impress me?"

"Impress you with what?"

"Well ... I just ... I guess I expected Pulp Fiction or even Miller's Crossing. I also have all of the Jason Bourne movies, if you'd rather."

"Well, that's good to know, for future reference, but I happen to love this movie and I haven't seen it in many years."

"Many years? How many is 'many'?"

"I dunno.” He shrugged. “A lot."

"Because I haven't seen it in many years, either. But, you know—the last time I saw it, I was still an adult; whereas you were, like, eight then."

Edward sighed and picked up the remote, hitting the pause button. He looked at me seriously, all of his smiles and grins gone. "Bella..."

I raised my eyebrows at him, not knowing what he wanted. The hand resting on the back of the sofa moved to my hair and he held a strand between his fingers, moving it between them while he stared at it.

"So this really bothers you?" He looked me in the eye then, his hand not moving from my hair. "Our age difference?"

I sighed a little myself before answering and turned my body toward him. "The truth?" I asked. 

He nodded in reply. 

"Sometimes, yes." 

His eyes dropped and his hand dropped from my hair, as well. I put a hand on his chest so he would know I wasn't finished with what I was saying. His shirt really was soft. 

"Sometimes, no," I said, softly.

His eyes moved back to mine and I snuggled closer to him, feeling his arm move around my shoulders as I did so. 

"Sometimes," I said. "I think it may be a very good thing." 

Somehow, my legs ended up draped over his thighs, my feet resting against the arm rest of the sofa. He dropped an arm to rest it across my shins, as his other hand massaged the back of my neck lightly, through my hair.

"A good thing?" He looked almost sheepishly at me from under lowered lashes and never in my life had I wanted to kiss somebody more. I bent forward to do just that—very lightly, on his lips, before I spoke again.

"Well, you know..." My fingers drew designs on his soft shirt as I spoke. "Jacob was quite a bit older than I, and ... Well ... Let me just say that whatever dates I've had since have been less than stellar. The prospect of spending some quality time with an exceedingly hot, twenty-eight year-old—one who has the stamina of a hot twenty-eight year-old?" I kissed him more meaningfully then, letting my lips and tongue speak for me. I felt the denim of my jeans shifting against my shin as he fisted his hand there.

His eyes were glassy when we broke the kiss. "I'm twenty-seven," he said, grinning.

I laughed, softly. "Yeah, okay. Do I have to repeat my entire spiel now, just to change your age?"

"I think I get the picture," he said, moving toward me to continue our kiss. I put a hand on his chest to stop him.

"Just ... you know ... It is what it is. And I don't see any reason to pretend I'm not older than you."

He looked into my eyes for a moment, the heat from his hand moving through my hair and his other hand caressing my leg through my jeans. The green of his eyes seemed to get darker as I watched and as they bore into mine I could feel my heart beginning to race. 

"Okay," he finally whispered and he moved to kiss me again, but my hand stopped him again.

"And you?" I asked. "Does it bother you?"

He chuckled and moved toward me again. "No."

I pulled my face back. "No?"

"No," he said again, shaking his head.

"Not at all?"

His hand moved from my hair to cup my face and he again continued to look into my eyes. "Bella, I think you're beautiful. I think you're smart, I think you're passionate, I think you're funny, I think you've got moxy and I think you're hot as hell. That's really all I care about." He moved toward me again, but this time it was he who pulled back. "Except, I have one question."

"What's that?" I asked, surprised I could speak, as his last words had left me breathless.

While he asked his question, he moved, and moved me with him. He urged me down on the sofa, his body half-covering mine by the time he was finished speaking. "Is it true what they say? About women your age, I mean?"

I shook my head, not knowing what he meant. "What do they say?"

"Are you really in your sexual prime right now?" He chuckled and kissed my neck, burying his face against my shoulder.

I chuckled myself, half at what he asked me and half at the goosebumps that covered my flesh in response. "Well, I guess we'll leave that for you to discover on your own."

He growled and I giggled as his body pushed mine into the sofa. He grabbed my hands and moved them above my head, holding them there while his lips and his tongue teased and tickled me until I was squirming beneath him and thought I might lose my mind. His lips covered my neck before moving up to find my mouth. Once he did, all giggling stopped and I opened my lips to him, his tongue finding mine and entwining with it. A soft moan came from my throat as he let my hands go, one of his own moving down my arm until he reached my side, cupping my breast and squeezing it gently.

That's when the knock came at the door. Edward flew off of me and got to his feet with lightening speed, as if he expected my parents to come barreling through the room or something. I laughed and started straightening my clothes. 

"Relax, Edward. It's just the pizza."

He ran a hand ran through his hair, a guilty smile on his lips. "You want me to get it?"

My eyes trailed down his body and stopped when it came to the rather noticeable bulge in his pants. I rose, chuckling. "Um ... no, that's okay. I think I'd better get this one."

His eyes followed mine and he smiled, embarrassed, moving a hand to cover the front of his pants. I grabbed some cash off of the dining table, giggling. Before I opened the door, I caught his eye. "'Moxy', Edward?" I grinned at him and he shook his head, chuckling. "Really?"

After dropping the food onto the dining table, I went to the kitchen to grab us some plates and utensils. I heard a rustling of paper as Edward took our salad out of the bag it had been in.

"What's with all this food? Two pizzas?"

I put the plates down on the table and opened one of the pizza boxes. "Yep. I got you your manly meat pizza, as you can see." I lifted the box to him and he peered into it. "And I got a Margherita pizza for me."

He looked mine over. "Looks boring. What's on it?"

"Just cheese, tomatoes and basil." 

He wrinkled his nose at me. 

"That's why I ordered two pizzas."

"That just seems silly," he said, putting a small amount of salad on a plate. "I would have eaten whatever you want." He paused after he said that, salad stuck to a serving fork, hovering above his plate. He looked at me with a devilish gleam in his eye and chuckled as he watched a blush cover my cheeks.

I cleared my throat and pretended I didn't catch his meaning. "Why should you be deprived of all the meat you want–"

He shot me a lascivious grin. "Isn't that my line?"

I gave him a pointed look and continued as if I hadn't heard him. "When I could just order two and we can both have what we want?"

"Well, I'm all for both of us getting what we want." He winked at me and piled three pieces of pizza onto his plate.

He bumped my hip with his as he walked past me, holding his plate of food in his hands.

"So am I going to be dodging these heavy-handed double-entendres all night?" I asked as I put a large amount of salad and a piece of pizza on my plate.

"Hey, I believe you started it."

We started the movie over again, since we hadn't really paid attention to the first few minutes when they initially played. We ate our food and laughed at the appropriate times. When we finished off our bottle of wine, Edward opened another and when we had finished eating we snuggled into one another on the sofa. When Manhattan finished and I had wiped the few tears from my eyes that I'd shed at the sweetness of the ending, we put in Miller's Crossing, a movie Edward had never seen.

I'm not saying we actually watched the movie. But it was playing.

By the time we got to the part where Johnny Caspar approached Tom Reagan about clearing up his debts for him if he'd come work for Caspar, Edward's tongue was running down my neck, from behind my ear to the top of my Springsteen shirt.

When Verna and Tom got down to business for the first time, he cupped my face in his hand and turned it toward him, kissing me deeply. He ran his hand down my side and pulled my legs up and over his lap while Tom tried to hide his affair from his boss, Leo.

Edward was on top of me, kissing me, my shirt pushed up and his hands all over me as Tom took Bernie Bernbaum out into the woods to kill him. I pulled my mouth away from his, only to have him move to my neck, kissing, licking and nibbling. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down just a little.

"You really should watch this part," I said, my breaths still coming too fast.

He pulled up, panting, and looked down into my face, one of his brows raised.

"This part in the movie. It's very important."

He looked toward the television for a moment, then looked around us until he found the remote control. He grabbed it and shut the t.v. off.

"We'll watch it tomorrow," he said, grinning.

He was almost sitting up and, as he looked down at me, his grin faded slowly and his eyes darkened. All of a sudden, I became acutely aware that my shirt was still pushed up and I felt very exposed. I reached to pull it down, but he stopped me. He pushed my hands away softly, looking me in the eye. The smile came back to his face and he tugged at the shirt, his eyes questioning mine. I sat up just a bit, so I could help him take the shirt off, over my head.

"Bye-bye, Boss," Edward said as he tossed the shirt to the floor and his lips came back to meet mine.

His kisses were insane. He liked to tease me, pulling away to run his tongue along my upper lip or my teeth, sometimes nibbling on my lower lip before plunging into me, his silky tongue gliding against mine and his lips moving erotically. I pulled on his crazy hair; I squirmed beneath him, the friction from my blue jeans simply inadequate to suit my needs. One of my legs went around his hips, pulling him closer to me. His thigh moved between mine, making me squirm against him even more.

He removed his mouth from mine, again moving down my neck. His hand moved up my side toward my breast until it met his lips there and he cupped my flesh in his hand while covering it with his mouth. The moist heat of his breath through the thin fabric of my bra made me shiver.

"My God, you are beautiful, Bella." 

I moaned and he pulled back, smiling down at me. 

"Seriously, your body..." The look that came over his face then was not the one of overwhelming lust I might have hoped for. Instead, he almost grimaced and he pulled back farther, almost to a sitting position.

"What's wrong?" My voice sounded odd in my ears—rough and breathy, deeper than usual.

His face paled a bit, but he looked back down at me, smiling again. "Nothing." His eyes fell back to my breasts and the look that came over his face was much more complimentary and inviting. It was one of hunger. "Fuck," he said, and dropped his mouth to my breast again. His hands moved around to my back, toward the hooks of my bra and I heard a soft growl emanating from him before he pulled up and away from me again.

"Edward?" I asked

"I'm—I'm sorry, I..." He sat up fully and I had no choice but to follow him in kind. His face really was paling then.

"Edward..." I almost whispered his name and I put a hand on his back. He looked at me with panicked eyes.

"Jesus, Bella." He sprang up from the couch. "Where's your–?"

Knowing immediately what he meant without his having to finish, I pointed in the right direction. "End of the hall!"

He ran down the hall and I heard the door slam.