Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,159

explained.

“Okay.” Still a whisper.

I moved around her, slow deliberate steps, and walked to the center of the meadow. I sat down in a patch of low grass, and locked my muscles in place, as I had done before. I breathed carefully in and out, listening as her hesitant footsteps crossed the same distance, tasting her fragrance as she sat down next to me.

“Is this all right?” she asked, uncertain.

I nodded. “Just… let me concentrate.”

Her eyes were huge with confusion, with concern. I didn’t want to explain. I closed my own.

Not in cowardice, I told myself. Or not just in cowardice. I did need to concentrate.

I focused on her scent, on the sound of the blood gushing through the chambers of her heart. Only my lungs were allowed motion. Every other part of me I imprisoned into rigid immobility.

Bella’s heart, I reminded myself as my involuntary systems reacted to the stimuli. Bella’s life.

I was always so careful to not think about her blood—the scent I couldn’t avoid, but the fluid, the movement, the pulse, the hot liquidity of it—these were things I could not dwell on. But now I let it fill my mind, invade my system, attack my controls. The gushing and throbbing of it, the pounding and sloshing. The surge through the biggest arteries, the ripple through the smallest vein. The heat of it, heat that washed in waves across my exposed skin despite the distance between us. The taste of it burning on my tongue and aching in my throat.

I held myself captive, and observed. A small part of my brain was able to stay detached, to think through the onslaught. With that small bit of rationality, I examined my every reaction minutely. I calculated the amount of strength needed to curb each response, and weighed the strength I possessed against that tally. It was a near calculation, but I believed that my will was stronger than my bestial nature. Slightly.

Was this Alice’s knot? It didn’t feel… complete.

All the while, Bella sat almost as still as I was, thinking her private thoughts. Could she imagine any part of the turmoil inside my mind? How did she explain this strange, silent standoff to herself? Whatever she thought of it, her body was calm.

Time seemed to slow with her pulse. The sound of the birds in distant trees turned sleepy. The cascade of the little stream grew somehow more languid. My body relaxed, and even my mouth stopped watering eventually.

Two thousand three hundred sixty-four of her heartbeats later, I felt more in control than I had in many days. Facing things was the key, as Alice had predicted. Was I ready? How could I be sure? How would I ever be sure?

And how did I break this long hush I’d imposed? It was starting to feel awkward to me; it must have felt so to her for a while.

I unlocked my pose and lay back in the grass, one hand casually behind my head. Feigning the physical sign of emotion was old habit. Perhaps if I portrayed relaxation, she would believe it.

She only sighed quietly.

I waited to see if she would speak, but she sat silent as before, thinking whatever it was she might be thinking, alone in this remote place with a monster who reflected the sun like a million prisms. I could feel her eyes on my skin, but I didn’t imagine her revolted anymore. The imaginary weight of her gaze—now that I knew it was admiring, that she found me beautiful regardless of everything—brought back that electric current I’d felt with her in the dark, an imitation of life running through my veins.

I let myself get lost in the rhythms of her body, let the sound and the warmth and the smell comingle, and I found that I could still master my inhuman desires, even while the phantom current moved under my skin.

This took most of my attention, though. And inevitably, this quiet waiting period would end. She would have so many questions—much more pointed now, I imagined. I owed her a thousand different explanations. Could I handle everything at once?

I decided to try to juggle a few more tasks while still tuning in to the flow and ebb of her blood. I would see if the distraction was too much.

First, I gathered information. I triangulated the exact location of the birds I could hear, and then by their calls identified each one’s genus and species. I analyzed the irregular splash that revealed life in the stream,