Back to Us by LauraACullen

A Twilight Fan Fiction Story

Summary

Anyone would think Bella Cullen had it all: a good guy of a husband, a sweet daughter, lots of
friends, and the satisfaction of being her own boss. But Bella's terrified...of her perfectly amiable
but passionless middle-aged marriage. AU-AH, Mature

Chapter 1.

“Oh, yeah,” Edward groaned in a low, husky voice.

According to the LED on my digital alarm clock, we‟d been having sex for approximately eight

minutes, which meant it would soon be over.

I was in the position my husband usually preferred—on my hands and knees, facing away from

him, with no opportunity for kissing or eye contact or any other intimate connection.

He shifted his hips and I moaned in pleasure and in frustration, knowing I wouldn‟t be able to get

there in this position, at least not as fast as I‟d need to.

Three minutes later, I clenched my eyes as hard as I could and tried desperately to hold onto the
fantasy image of Edward moving over me, cradled between my thighs, his arms clutched around
my shoulders and his body hunched over mine as he devoured me in a kiss and ground his pelvic

bone into mine again and again….

“Oh, God,” I cried. I was close…so close…so….

With a grunt, Edward stilled and I felt the pulsing of his erection inside me.

Damn.

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss between my shoulder blades. “Love you, Bella.” He pushed
back off the bed and walked into the bathroom. I flopped down onto my stomach, still panting and
aroused, and pulled the sheet up over me.

Ten minutes later, Edward walked out of the bathroom showered, mostly dressed, and looking fine
as always. Tall and trim with green eyes and bronze hair, Edward‟s athletic body still appealed to
me the way it did when we met seventeen years before. He had just a touch of grey at the

temples, and somehow it made him even sexier.

Why do men wear age so much better than women?

With a sigh I sat up, holding the sheet to cover my chest against the chilly air in our bedroom.
Neither of us liked to be hot when we slept so we kept the heat low, despite the fact that it was

early December.

“Will you be late tonight?” I asked. Since March, Edward had worked at his dream job—Community
Relations Liaison for the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team. He played college baseball
and was good, but not good enough. He couldn‟t have been more thrilled when he‟d been able to
combine his lifelong love of sports with the career he‟d made in public relations. But I never knew

what his schedule was going to be.

“Nah, I should be home for dinner. Things should be calm for the next month or two while all

players are on holiday.” He turned and rooted through the hanging clothes in his closet.

“Okay, good. I‟ll make us a nice dinner. Angela is bringing Ness home tonight after choir practice,

so we can eat around seven?”

“Sounds like a plan. What are you doing today?”

“Jessica‟s opening the shop, but I told her I‟d be there by noon. I think I‟ll go to the gym and then

go in.”

“That‟ll be good,” Edward murmured as he shrugged into his sports coat.

I slid out of bed and walked right by him as I went into the bathroom. I sucked in my stomach to
highlight the oblique abdominal muscles I‟d been working on lately and gave my naked hips a good

shimmy. He didn‟t notice.

“Okay,” he called from the bedroom, “I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

I turned the sink off and rested my wet hands against the edge. “Okay. I love you.”

“Love you, too.” His voice was distant enough that I knew he was already running downstairs.

No kiss. Again.

...

As I quickly showered sleep and sex off of my body, I couldn‟t help but think of numbers. I‟d been
thinking about them a lot lately. And while I knew it wasn‟t good to keep „count‟ or „score‟ like this,

I just couldn‟t help it anymore.

Like, ten: the number of minutes our lovemaking usually lasted.

And, four: the number of minutes of foreplay we usually had.

Here was a two: the number of months since I‟d had an orgasm with Edward.

As opposed to one: the number of days since I‟d given myself an orgasm. I was damn near an

expert.

A more disappointing one was this: the number of times we had sex in a month if I left it up to
Edward to initiate. This morning had been Edward‟s idea, which meant any more sexin‟ in the near
future would be up to me to make happen. I couldn‟t say if it was my age or the boosting effects of
my recent weight loss or the incredibly raunchy romance series I‟d found recently, but I was ready
for sex, well, pretty much any time. Edward seemed pleased by that when it first started a while

ago, but it didn‟t take long before we were back to our normal infrequent liaisons.

Then there was seven: the average number of kisses we exchanged in a typical week. That number
dropped to one or two if you added „French‟ in front of „kisses.‟ Mostly we gave pecks. I‟d had more
passionate kisses as a thirteen-year-old in the instrument room of my middle school music

department.

I cringed, not enjoying the reminder that my own thirteen-year-old daughter, Vanessa, might be
starting to engage in some of the same experimentation I had at her age. I‟d been putting off „The

Talk‟ with her but really needed to have it. Soon.

On auto pilot through most of the shower, I turned the water off and grabbed my towel. As I ran

the thick terry cloth over my body, other numbers came to mind.

Fifteen: the number of years I‟d been married to Edward, my best friend, the father of my

daughter, and the love of my life.

And five: the number of years since I really felt that he desired me, wanted me, needed me.

It wasn‟t all his fault.

Six years ago I opened my own business, Times of Our Lives, an up-scale women‟s boutique for
special occasions. Located just two blocks from the famous Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle,
the store was my dream come true. I always wanted to be my own boss, but the shop took time to
get up and running and required a lot of hands-on management. I absolutely loved doing it, but
retail hours could be hard on a spouse, though recently his hours had been as bad as mine.

Somehow becoming parents hadn‟t impacted our sex life. Instead, it seemed to have brought us so
much closer together. But in recent years, our lives seemed to take on increasingly disparate

paths, in and out of the bedroom.

Now it was almost like we were friends with benefits or roommates with a little something-
something on the side. It was very safe and stable and comfortable and loving, in a friendly kind of

way.

But it was all just…so…passionless.

I‟d hear some of my friends—especially my best friend Rose who was recently divorced and back
on the market—talk about things like lust and magnetism and wild sex. And I just couldn‟t relate.

Maybe this is just the natural course of a middle-aged marriage?

I shuffled into the walk-in closet and grabbed gym clothes. Back in the bathroom, I pulled my dark
brown hair into a wet ponytail and encased my body in Under Armour. As I dressed, I studied
myself in the mirror.

I’m not half bad, I thought.

My hair was still as thick and shiny as it had ever been and my eyes just as big and brown. I wasn‟t
thin, but I wasn‟t heavy either. I was just on the verge of that elusive size eight for which I‟d been
striving for months, it seemed. And while I was starting to see some wrinkles around the corners of
my eyes and around my mouth, they weren‟t anything some high quality skin cream couldn‟t

handle.

Which all brought another number to mind: thirty-nine. The age I would turn in just two and a half

weeks.

How I could be so close to forty was beyond me. I didn‟t feel forty. In my mind, I was still about
twenty-eight, maybe thirty. Young but with experience under my belt. But forty…forty was old,

wasn‟t it? I just didn‟t feel forty.

Maybe that’s why our marriage is so lacking in passion. Maybe forty-year-olds just don’t have hot

sex.

Maybe hot sex and hard kisses up against a wall and tearing one another‟s clothes off because you
just had to get him naked and his feeling some kind of smug pride in having gotten you off four

times during sex that went on for two hours…maybe that was all for twenty-somethings.

I sighed.

The possibility that that kind of passion might be behind me absolutely terrified me. I wanted it so

desperately. And I wanted Edward to want it too—with me, of course.

We‟d had it, once. But we didn‟t have it anymore.

And I wasn‟t sure how to get it back.

How to get back to us.

Chapter 2.

“Excuse me?”

I looked up from my paperwork on the black granite counter. After the gym, I‟d showered,
dressed, and come into store, though it had been a slow day so I‟d taken the chance to catch up on

inventory ordering.

I gaped at the customer standing before me.

I‟d greeted him when he‟d come in, of course, but I clearly hadn‟t paid close enough attention.
Now, my eyes couldn‟t decide whether to focus on the man‟s square jaw, ice-blue eyes, broad
shoulders, or muscular body. And if his sex-god physique wasn‟t enough, he was holding a

wonderfully smutty bra and panty set without an ounce of self-consciousness.

“Um, sorry, yes, how may I help you?”

He smirked and held up the bits of leather and satin. “I wondered if you had this in a 32C.”

“I‟ll be happy to check,” I offered as I turned away and tried to hide the fact that my eyes were

bugging out of my head.

In the stockroom I found Jessica Stanley, my Assistant Manager and long-time friend, unpacking

boxes.

“Oh my God, Jessica. Adonis is out there and he‟s asking for my favorite set.”

She stood up with raised eyebrows and pushed her shoulder-length light brown hair behind her

ears. “The black leather and satin?”

I rolled my eyes as I pushed through the hanging stock. “What else?”

“I don‟t know why you don‟t just buy it for yourself, woman. You‟ve been drooling over it since it

came in.”

“Well, unlike the sex god standing in the middle of my store, my husband doesn‟t seem to have the
least appreciation for the power of lingerie. You know this.” I lamented Edward‟s apparent lack of
interest in lingerie every time something especially cute or sexy or downright slutty had come in.
He didn‟t seem to notice when I wore it and never commented on it.

But I loved lingerie. Loved. It. I loved everything about it. I loved the way I felt when I saw myself
in a matching bra and panty, I loved the way my butt cheeks looked in a pair of cheekies, I loved
satin bows and lace ruffles and contrasting stitching and boyish hipsters and….

Just then my fingers found the size I, er, he, needed. “Ah. Here it is. Good-bye sweet bra set. Have
fun.”

Jessica rolled her eyes and shoved me playfully. “Adonis awaits.”

“That he does,” I sighed, “that he does.”

After showing the man the set, I wrapped it up in heavy black and pink patterned tissue paper as

was our practice and slid it into the handled store bag.

“Thank you,” I said as I handed the bag to him. “Happy holidays, and enjoy your purchase.”

“I‟m sure it‟ll be a great Christmas,” he said as he jiggled the bag suggestively.

The blush that sprang to my face deepened when he noticed it and winked.

When the door bell chimed his departure, I bent over and set my forehead on the cool granite

counter. “Kill me now,” I said, a chuckle coming into my voice as I silently added, or fuck me now.

I rolled my head to the side, pressing my cheek into the cold stone surface, and my eyes settled on
the pair of dressing rooms across the store. The image was in my head so fast it was almost
startling: me, wearing that set. Adonis, still mostly dressed in that fine silk suit, lifting me up by

my ass as he took me against the full-length mirror….

“You okay there, Bella?”

I nodded as I stood up. Clearly my lack of release this morning had me wound a little tight. I
smiled through the heat of my blush and grabbed a handful of hanging clothes out of Jessica‟s
hands. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Jessica and I restocked the shelves with the new

inventory that had arrived the day before and alternated with assisting customers.

As I moved around the store, I couldn‟t help feeling proud of the shop, of having achieved running
my own business. The store had a lush black, pink, and ivory color scheme and was organized into
sections around the store name, Times of Our Lives. The special occasion dresses went in the
Dressy Times section, the biggest area of the store. The lingerie went in the next biggest section
called Sexy Times—we were known for carrying luxe couture brands not widely available in the
Seattle area. Ah, La Perla. The Time to Celebrate! section had a variety of gifts for weddings and
baby showers and other celebratory occasions and was right next to the Time to Accessorize wall,
which featured an array of handmade jewelry by Olympic Peninsula artisans. A set of large French
country bookshelves made up the Time to Learn section, which featured self-help books on
relationships, pregnancy, and sex—not to mention a growing collection of erotica that kept us, uh,

amused when business was slow.

They say that owning your own business is akin to buying a job. But I truly loved it.

As Jessica and I worked, something occurred to me. “It‟s December fourth,” I mumbled.

“What‟s that?”

“Holy crap, it‟s December fourth,” I said louder.

“And?” Jessica was looking at me like I was crazy. “You doing okay today?” she asked with a smile.

“Cripes,” I said, trying to wean myself off the F-word.

“I think I prefer the F-word to „cripes‟ by the way. Kinda lame.”

I agreed, of course, because „fuck‟ was absolutely the best curse word known to woman, but

shoved that thought aside as I grumbled, “Do you wanna hear my epiphany or not?”

“Yeah, boss lady,” she said, reverting to sarcasm in response to my snark.

“That man, that god of a man,” I exclaimed while waving a hanger around to emphasize my words,
“bought his wife, girlfriend, whatever, a Christmas gift on December fourth!”

“Yeah…?”

“And, that makes it twenty days before he had to do it!”

“Ah, now I get it. This is about Edward.” She put down the empty box she was working on and

looked up at me.

I nodded, hating myself for complaining to my friends about some of his annoying habits—like his
complete inability to purchase me a gift for any occasion before the last possible second he had to
do it. I could easily think of a half-dozen recent times when he‟d waited to the day of to buy me
something for a special occasion or holiday, let alone the day before. And that meant, at

Christmas, Edward was a Christmas-Ever all the way.

And here was Mr. Sex God buying my favorite bra set three weeks early.

“You know—”

“I know,” I said, offering my usual explanation, “it just seems so petty to complain about stuff like
this. He‟s a busy guy in an important job. And he means well.” And how could I talk to him about
this particular issue when I couldn‟t even decide for myself whether his habit of waiting until the
last minute was a representation that doing something special for me wasn‟t a priority to him, or if
I was being a completely overreacting brat and it shouldn‟t matter? Though I felt pretty certain
that I‟d had a right to be miffed about him waiting until February 15 to plan a Valentine‟s

celebration for us on the 16th last year.

Jessica nodded and patted my shoulder as she went in the back to discard some boxes. The

exchange made me glad that Edward and I would have tonight to talk and reconnect.

Sometimes, when our time together was so limited, too much went unsaid.

And however mundane sharing the details of our day-to-day work and domestic lives was, that was

the stuff of which marital intimacy was made.

A rush of customers around 5:00 p.m. pulled me out of my thoughts and distracted me.

Leah Clearwater arrived in the midst of the rush. My second-longest employee, she was completing

a PhD in Women‟s Studies and loved to “deconstruct” my store inventory.

She jumped right into the fray as she always did, her black hair flowing around her as she assisted

and joked around with the customers.

Her arrival was my signal to head out. Just as I was slipping into my coat in the back room, the

phone rang, bringing the bad news that Kate was sick and couldn‟t come in.

“Damn,” I muttered as I slid back out of my coat.

“What‟s the matter?” Jessica asked as she began to collect her things.

“Kate just called out sick.”

Jessica didn‟t hesitate. “You go. I‟ll stay. I didn‟t have anything planned for tonight. You, however,

did. Go have a nice family dinner, for once.”

I inhaled to reply but she spoke before I could even begin to verbalize my protest.

“Don‟t even say „no,‟ Bella. I could hear in your voice when you were telling me about this earlier
how much having a normal night with Edward and Vanessa meant to you. I wouldn‟t offer if I didn‟t

mean it.”

“God, you‟re the best,” I said as I pulled her in for a quick hug.

“Yeah, yeah. I‟ll look for the raise in my next paycheck,” she cracked.

I rolled my eyes at one of her usual quips and pulled my jacket back on. “Okay, then. I‟m running

before fate tries to intervene again.”

“Good. Go already.”

I said a quick good-bye to Leah as I passed racks of silk and chiffon and satin and lace on the way

to the front of the store and breathed a sigh of excited relief as the door jingled closed behind me.

I made my way through the early evening darkness, the cold wind from the Seattle waterfront
curling up Virginia Street. Winter bit through my coat and had me grumbling during the short walk
to my car in a nearby parking garage. I took in the rush-hour traffic and early dinner-goers

browsing menus in the front windows of Belltown‟s many restaurants as I walked.

Fifteen minutes later, relaxation surged through me as I turned on W. Prospect Street. We‟d fallen
in love with the Queen Anne neighborhood because the streets there had a quaint, small-town feel
and nice views of the Downtown and the water. As I opened the gate to the charming green and

white Craftsman that was our home, I immediately felt warmed.

It was going to be so nice for the three of us to be together for once, to have a night to talk and

catch up with my husband and daughter.

Chapter 3.

“Hey, Mom! Wait up!”

I was stepping up onto the front porch as Vanessa‟s voice reached me from the Whitlocks‟ house
diagonally across the street. Hannah Whitlock had been Vanessa‟s best friend since kindergarten.
As a result of our daughters‟ friendship, Alice Whitlock and I were close and helped each other out
taking the girls to and from their various soccer matches and choir practices and the other million

things thirteen-year-old girls seemed to be into.

I turned the key in the lock as Vanessa caught up with me, her cheeks flush from the cold air and

looking like a miniature copy of me in just about every other way.

“Hey, Ness, how was your day?”

“Good,” she said as she pushed in after me and proceeded to dump her coat, gloves, backpack,

and boots on the bench in the foyer.

“Put all that away, please,” I reminded. Someday I would get around to making an audio recording.

Vanessa sighed as she picked everything back up and stuffed it without great care into the coat

closet.

“What happened at school today?” I asked as she came into the kitchen and bee-lined for the

fridge. I preheated the oven for the lasagna I‟d made and frozen last weekend.

“Nothing. Just the usual.” She tilted her head back and took a drink from her Diet Coke.

“What‟s the latest gossip?” I washed lettuce and vegetables in the sink.

“Mom.”

I couldn‟t help but tease her. She used to tell me every detail of her day. Now we were starting to

enter the stage of teenage stock answers to just about any question: “Good.” “Fine.” “Nothing.”

“I‟m gonna go upstairs and crash for a while.”

“Okay, sweetie. Do you have homework?” I asked as I slid the pan of lasagna in the oven.

“I finished it with Hannah.”

“Okay. Dad should be home in a bit. We‟re gonna eat around seven.” I set the finished salad aside

and began stuffing a fresh loaf of Italian with garlic and butter.

“Okay, Mom.”

Once everything was ready to go, I busied myself with picking up around the house. Piles of junk
mile, loads of laundry, and sink-fulls of dishes seemed to multiply when we were at work during
the day.

I was starting to get nervous that something had caught Edward at work after all when I heard his
car in the driveway. A shiver of excitement fluttered through my stomach and I realized just how

glad I was for this night together. He came in through the back kitchen door and I smiled at him.

“Hey, babe, how was your day?” I asked as I walked around the center island to him.

He shrugged. “Long. Okay. Yours?”

I pressed my body up against his after he laid his coat and laptop bag down on the table. “It was a
good day,” I said as I tilted my head back for a kiss.

He brushed his lips against mine then pulled away. “That‟s good.”

He picked his coat back up and stowed it and his shoes in the hall closet.

“What‟s for dinner? Something smells good.”

“Lasagna, salad, and garlic bread,” I confirmed as I peaked in at the bubbling cheese that told me

dinner was almost done.

Edward mmmed appreciatively.

“Would you please call Vanessa down?” I asked as I got plates and silverware out.

Edward walked to the bottom of the steps in the foyer. “Hey, baby girl. Dinner.”

Vanessa responded immediately and came jogging down the steps. “Daddy!”

They hugged and I loved the sight of it. Vanessa might look like me but she was a complete

Daddy‟s girl. They had always been sweet together.

Vanessa set the table as I put the food out and soon the three of us were settled in with heaping
plates of hot lasagna and crispy salad and bread. The good food made Vanessa more talkative, and
she started to share stories about her friends, a history project she was working on with a group,

and the upcoming choir concert that was just a week away.

“Is that still on your schedule, Edward?”

When he didn‟t respond right away, I looked over to find Edward typing on his Blackberry, a tense

look of concentration on his face.

“Edward?”

A beat passed and he looked up.

“What‟s that?” he asked as he set the device-I-hated-more-than-any-other on the table next to his

placemat.

“My concert, Daddy,” Vanessa explained.

“It‟s next Friday at eight,” I added. “Just making sure it‟s still on your calendar.”

“Um,” he picked up the Blackberry again and hit a few keys. “Yeah. I got it.” He smiled up at

Vanessa. “Can‟t wait. You‟re going to be great, Ness.”

Vanessa beamed and continued on talking about the solo she had. It was her first one and she was

nervous but thrilled.

The rest of dinner passed the same way, with the satisfying sound of Vanessa sharing her day with
me and the noticeable silence from the other end of the table where Edward continued to be
distracted by a series of messages coming in on his phone.

“Who are you writing?” I finally asked, trying to engage him. He knew I didn‟t like him
Blackberrying at meals and he usually tried to keep it to a minimum.

He sighed and put the phone back down. “Sorry. There‟s a potential PR problem brewing with a
player we‟re trying to recruit.” In three more bites, he cleaned his plate and pushed away from the

table. He set his dirty dishes on the counter next to the sink.

“I have dessert. Cannoli.” It was one of Edward‟s favorites.

“Awesome!” Vanessa cheered.

“Sounds great. I‟ll have some in a bit,” he mumbled as he stared at his Blackberry and stooped to
pick up his laptop bag. I knew within minutes he‟d be changed into his flannel lounge pants and an
old baseball shirt and seated on “his end” of the couch with the laptop on his lap and the
Blackberry perched at his side.

It wasn‟t exactly what I‟d hoped for a rare night of the three of us home at the same time
together. But it was pretty normal. Edward loved technology. He could operate his laptop,

Blackberry, iPod, and the TV remote simultaneously and flawlessly. He had it down to an art form.

I sighed as I cleared my and Vanessa‟s plates and got us dessert. I gave Vanessa the cannoli with
more chocolate chips and she smiled up at me as she picked one off and popped it in her mouth.

Vanessa got my sweet tooth and chocolate had always been a major point of bonding for us.

We made plans to go shopping on Sunday for the red dress she needed for her costume for the
choir concert. I was taking her and Hannah in exchange for Alice having them both for a sleepover

on Saturday night.

Vanessa stretched her athletic body over the back of her chair as she chewed the last bite of her

dessert. “That was really good, Mom. Thanks.”

“You‟re welcome, Ness.”

We both pushed away from the table and I smiled as she stuck around to help me clean up. She

was a good kid, and I was really proud of her.

“I think I‟m gonna go listen to some music for a while, and then go to bed,” she said as she wiped

her hands on a dish towel.

I walked over to her. “Okay, sweetie. I‟ll come up to say g‟night in a bit, okay?”

She nodded and skipped out of the room.

“Night, Daddy,” she called.

“Hey, wait a minute. Come here.” Edward‟s voice was full of affection. “Plant one right here.”

Vanessa‟s giggles made me smile. Edward had been getting kisses out of her that way since she

was a toddler.

“Sleep good, baby girl.”

“Love you, Daddy.”

“Love you more.”

Listening to their conversation, I smoothed a folded hand towel against the counter. Soon,

Vanessa‟s feet clomped up the stairs and her bedroom door clicked shut.

I walked into the living room and leaned against the arch separating it from the dining room.
Edward was intense and focused on his laptop, and utterly sexy. He had on an old worn-soft

baseball shirt from his playing days at the University of Washington that was my favorite. His bare
feet stuck out of the bottom of the navy flannel pants and he had his knees pulled up over the

footrest, the laptop cradled against his thighs as his big hands worked over the keys.

I was really hoping we could pick up where we ended this morning. My body had been yearning all
day for the release I hadn‟t managed to find then. And Adonis and the leather lingerie set hadn‟t

helped matters.

An idea popped into my mind and I turned away and padded up the steps. I knocked on Vanessa‟s
door and found her snuggled in bed with the earbuds to her iPod in and a book in her hands. I sat
on the edge of her bed and stroked my hand over her hair. She smiled up at me and pulled an ear

bud out.

“Sleep good, baby, okay?”

“I will. I‟m so happy I get to sleep in tomorrow.”

I chuckled and leaned down to kiss her. “Must be nice. I, on the other hand, have to open
tomorrow. Which means, hmm, I guess I will see you on Sunday. Have fun tomorrow with Hannah

and be good for Alice, „kay?”

“I will.”

“I love you, Vanessa.”

“Love you too, Mom,” she said as I walked to the door. When I turned around, she already had the

ear bud back in.

I smiled, closed her door, and ran down to my own room. With Vanessa all settled in, I might just

be able to get away with my idea.

I shed my clothes in a heap and pulled open my lingerie drawer. I had the perfect thing: a dark
chocolate silk teddy with raspberry lace and ivory piping from a collection I carried inspired by
desserts. I hadn‟t been able to resist. And since I was serving dessert anyway….

A quick detour into the bathroom allowed me to brush my teeth and run a brush through my hair.

Then I threw on a robe in case Vanessa popped out into the hall and ran back downstairs, trying to

suppress my giddiness at the supreme excellence of my idea.

I skirted past the living room and skidded in bare feet into the kitchen, then plated the cannoli and

shed my robe over the back of a kitchen chair.

Taking a deep breath and pressing a hand against my nervous heart, I walked into the living room

holding the dessert plate suggestively.

Edward didn‟t seem to notice as I entered the room, and I bit back the huge grin at the fact that I

would be able to surprise him. I stopped about five feet from his foot rest and posed.

One moment passed, then another, and then finally Edward‟s eyes lifted up from his laptop screen

to take me in.

My smile dropped as I took in the momentary flash of irritation that clouded Edward‟s face before

he tried to cover it up for a more neutral reaction to my offering.

“I brought you dessert,” I said as I sat the cannoli down on the end table near him, my former

giddiness now reined in.

“Thanks, Bella.” He smiled up at me and reached a hand out to rub at the silk on my hip.

I immediately began thinking of how to backtrack. The last thing I wanted to do was guilt him. “Is

this prospective player issue a big deal?”

He sighed. “I think it‟s gonna be. The contract‟s all but signed and there are drug allegations

surfacing.” He patted my thigh and looked up at me. “Sorry, love, I—”

“No, it‟s okay,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear him actually say he wasn‟t interested, or didn‟t

have time, or whatever. It was bad enough to be turned down without hearing it vocalized too.

I bent down and kissed him. The feeling of his hand threading into my hair took some of the sting

away.

“I think I‟m gonna go up and take a shower, maybe read for a while. Will you be long?”

“Not sure yet. Don‟t wait up, though.”

“Okay. I love you.”

He smiled up at me. “Love you too.” He picked up his cannoli and took a bite, then sucked a bit of

cream off his thumb.

I turned away and moved to the kitchen to retrieve my robe.

Back upstairs, I stood in the middle of my bedroom for a minute. Then I returned to my closet,
shed my clothes, and put away the clothes I‟d rushed out of earlier. In the bathroom, I turned the
shower to hot and stepped in after the water warmed.

Edward or no Edward, I was still feeling needy.

I leaned my hands against the tiled wall and let the hard spray pound into my neck and back. I
closed my eyes and my mind wandered slowly but surely to the sexy main character in a book I‟d
finished the other night.

In a scene I‟d particularly loved, the hero had fallen to his knees before his soulmate in thanks for
her surviving an attempt on her life. Unable to restrain himself from having her, claiming her,
knowing she was his forever, the powerful and darkly beautiful man had wrenched her clothes off.
He ripped her lace panties right from her body and authoritatively nudged her legs apart so he
could taste of her, which he did wantonly and with skill so great it was his muscle alone that held

her in a standing position as her third release shattered her.

Then he‟d laid her out, all rippling muscle and pulsing need, and asked if he could have her,

moaned his need to be in her.

Breathing harder now, I pulled the removable showerhead down from the hook and ran it first over
my breasts and then to the junction of my thighs. I gasped and pressed my hips towards the
needling water as I recalled the way his huge shaft stretched her, filled her, made her feel
complete. And, oh God, the way he talked to her, the things he said, as he pounded into her
relentlessly….

My orgasm caught me off guard, so quick and hard did it hit.

I clamped my lips shut tight and moaned through the tremors wracking my body.

I inhaled deeply once and opened my eyes, then returned the nozzle to its hook.

Good night, old friend, I thought wryly.

Sighing, I finished showering, blew my hair most of the way dry, and slipped into some cotton
pajamas.

As I pushed up onto my side of our huge king bed, I looked at the pile of romance novels stacked
this way and that on my nightstand.

Maybe they were part of my problem.

Without exception, they were written by women, for women. And so, in them, the men were
always deeply devoted, passionately adoring, and utterly enthralled. Without fail, the men in my
romance novels couldn‟t live without their women and said so, out loud and repeatedly. In the land
of Harlequin, women came on command (often multiple times), men knew their way around down

there with practiced skill, and every lovemaking ended in a joint orgasm.

Few real men could meet such standards. Hell, few real women could meet them either.

I sighed as I shifted to lean against pillows I fluffed against the headboard.

Yeah, they probably were part of my problem.

But, if I couldn‟t have such passion in real life, I at least needed it in my mind.

I reached over, grabbed my latest fix, and lost myself in the world of perfectly passionate fictional

romance.