 (cont) Chapter 3 - An Invitation
"I’ll just put her to bed and be on my way," Rosalie said to me slyly as she disappeared down the small hall.
I gaped at the scene before me. The room was lit by dozens of flickering candles. They were scattered throughout the main area and cast dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling. Hundreds of roses of assorted colors adorned the room from wall to wall, all in expensive looking crystal vases. The floor was covered in a blanket of rose petals. The sound of my lullaby filled the room softly from the stereo in the corner. Standing in the very middle of the room, holding a single long stemmed red rose was Edward.
"See you in the morning…" Rosalie sang as she breezed back through the living room and out the front door, not pausing for a response. She stirred the fragrance in the room and left a flurry of petals in her wake.
A wicked smile spread across Edward’s face that would have stopped my heart had it still been beating. "Welcome home, Mrs. Cullen." He slowly began to close the distance between us and for the second time in a day I found myself catching my breath. His wore a blue shirt with small, white vertical stripes. The long sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbows and it clung slightly to his torso accentuating his broad, masculine chest. The shirt hung just below the waist of his jeans. The light from the candles reflected off his unkempt bronze hair. He looked as if he just stepped off a runway.
He stopped a few inches away and looked down at me, his warm butterscotch eyes burning into mine, and reached up to trace from my temple down my cheek to my jaw with the rose he still held. I stammered, trying to find the right words, "How did you….?" He smiled crookedly down at me, stopping me mid sentence. "Alice." We both declared in unison.
"And you said you couldn’t read my mind…" I accused, narrowing my eyes playfully.
"I can’t, silly girl," he joked, tapping my forehead with his finger, "but that’s not really what’s important right now."
"Oh really, and what is important, Mr. Cullen?" I teased.
He didn’t answer at first. He merely scooped me up, wrapping his arm around my waist lifting me so that my feet were a few inches off the ground. With his other hand, he took mine and began slowly turning me around to the sound of my lullaby. "Well," he began, finally answering, "I was trying to remember exactly how long it has been since I have had you all alone to myself…"
"Four months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes," I provided with certainty.
"Well that, my dearest Bella, is far too long." He leaned forward, tilting my chin up until his lips pressed to mine, gently at first, and then moving more aggressively in unison with mine. I moved my hands to grip fistfuls of his hair and felt his arm tighten around my waist, pulling my body closer to his. Liquid fire began to spread from where our lips touched down through the veins in my body. I didn’t realize Edward had been moving us across the room until I felt my back press against the bookcase that lined the wall of the living room. Edward slid his hand up the length of my arm until he found my hand and untangled it from his hair. Grabbing hold of my wrist, he moved my arm until it was pinned outstretched over my head against the leather bound books and pressed himself even closer to me. He pulled his lips from mine and moved them to my neck and down until they found my collarbone.
I closed my eyes and fought to shake the fog from my head. "Edward…" I managed to force out in a groan.
"Say no more!" he replied eagerly. He swept me up and carried me to our bedroom, where we remained for the rest of the night.
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