Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,173

lips. I wanted to hear every thought in hers. That, at least, was nothing new. Everything else was new. Everything had changed.

I reached for her hand—without first exhaustively debating the act in my mind—simply because I wanted to feel it against my skin. I felt free to be spontaneous for the first time. These new impulses were completely unrelated to the old.

“Here.” I placed her palm against my cheek. “Do you feel how warm it is?”

Her reaction to this first instinctive act of mine was more than I’d expected. Her fingers trembled against my cheekbone. Her eyes grew round and the smile slipped away. Her heartbeat and her breathing accelerated.

Before I could regret the deed, she leaned closer and whispered, “Don’t move.”

A thrill shivered through me.

Her request was easily accomplished. I froze myself into the absolute stillness that humans were incapable of duplicating. I didn’t know what she intended—acclimating herself to my lack of a circulatory system seemed unlikely—but was eager to find out. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure whether I did this to free her from the self-consciousness of my scrutiny, or because I wanted no distractions from this moment.

Her hand began to move very slowly. First she stroked my cheek. Her fingertips grazed across my closed eyelids, and then brushed a half circle beneath them. Where her skin met mine, it left a trail of tingling heat. She traced the length of my nose and then, with the trembling in her fingers more pronounced now, the shape of my lips.

My frozen form melted. I let my mouth fall slightly open, so that I could breathe in the nearness of her.

One finger caressed my bottom lip again, and then her hand fell away. I felt the air cool between us as she leaned back.

I opened my eyes and met her gaze. Her face was flushed, her heart still raced. I felt a phantom echo of the pace inside my own body, though no blood pushed it.

I wanted… so many things. Things I had not felt any need for in my entire immortal life before I met her. Things I was sure I had not wanted before I was immortal, either. And I felt that some of them, things I’d always thought impossible, might, in fact, be very possible.

But while I felt comfortable with her now as far as my thirst was concerned, I was still too strong. So much stronger than she was, every limb of my body unyielding as steel. I must always think of her fragility. It would take time to learn exactly how to move around her.

She stared at me, waiting, wondering what I thought of her touches.

“I wish… I wish you could feel the… complexity,” I fumbled to explain. “The confusion I feel. That you could understand.”

A tendril of her hair, caught in the breeze, danced in the sun, catching the light with a reddish shine. I reached out to feel the texture of that errant lock between my fingers. And then, because it was so close, I couldn’t resist stroking her face. Her cheek felt like velvet left out in the sun.

Her head tilted into my hand, but her eyes remained intent on my face.

“Tell me,” she breathed.

I couldn’t imagine where to even begin. “I… don’t think I can. I’ve told you, on the one hand, the hunger, the thirst, that”—I gave her an apologetic half smile—“deplorable creature I am, I feel for you. And I think you can understand that, to an extent. Though as you are not addicted to any illegal substances, you probably can’t empathize completely.… But…”

My fingers seemed to search out her lips of their own accord. I brushed them lightly. Finally. They were softer than I’d imagined. Warmer.

“There are other hungers,” I continued. “Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.”

She gave me that slightly skeptical look again. “I may understand that better than you think.”

“I’m not used to feeling so human,” I admitted. “Is it always like this?” The wild current singing through my system, the magnetic pull drawing me forward, the feeling that there might never be a closeness that would be close enough.

“For me?” She paused, considering. “No, never. Never before this.”

I took both her hands between mine.

“I don’t know how to be close to you,” I cautioned her. “I don’t know if I can.”

Where to set the limits to keep her safe? How to keep selfish desire from pushing those limits unwisely?

She shifted closer to me. I held myself still and