Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,225

our past interactions. In the early days, I’d often misinterpreted her reactions to me, but now I saw things through a new filter. I knew that if I looked into her eyes with a certain intensity, she would often lose her train of thought. And then when I kissed her, she forgot all kinds of things—common sense, self-preservation, and even life-sustaining activities like breathing.

“Hmmm…” I considered how to proceed. “It seems I’m going to have to tamper with your memory.”

I lifted her out of the Jeep and set her gently on her feet. She stared at me, a little nervous, a little excited.

She raised her eyebrows. “Tamper with my memory?”

“Something like that.”

In the past, I’d had the strongest effect on her when I’d been searching most intensely to hear her secret thoughts. Amused by the futility, I tried again. I stared deeply into her clear, dark eyes. My own narrowed and I struggled fiercely through the silence. Of course there was nothing to hear.

She blinked four times fast, her nervous expression shifting to one that was more… stunned.

I felt I was on the right path.

Leaning closer, I placed my hands against the hardtop, one on either side of her head. She took a half step back, pressing herself against the door. Did she need more space? Her chin angled up, her face set at the perfect incline for me to kiss her. Probably not, then. I moved a few inches closer. Her eyes closed halfway, her lips parted.

“Now, what exactly are you worrying about?” I murmured.

She blinked fast again, and took a gasping breath—I wasn’t at all sure what I was supposed to be doing about her frequent breathing lapses. Did I need to remind her at intervals?

“Well…” She swallowed, then sucked in another ragged breath. “Um, hitting a tree. And dying. And then getting sick.”

I grinned at her order of events, then forced my face back into its former expression of intensity. Slowly I leaned down and pressed my lips into the small indentation between her collarbones. Her breath caught and her heart fluttered.

My lips moved against the skin of her throat. “Are you still worried now?”

It took her a moment to find her voice. “Yes?” She whispered the word, unsure. “About hitting trees… and getting sick?”

Slowly I tilted my face up, tracing the length of her throat with my nose and lips. I breathed my next question into the hollow just under the edge of her jaw. Her eyes slid all the way closed.

“And now?”

She was breathing in quick pants. “Trees?” she gasped. “Motion sickness?”

I brushed my lips up the side of her face, then softly kissed first one eyelid, then the next.

“Bella, you don’t really think I would hit a tree, do you?” My tone was gently chiding. After all, she was the one who thought I was good at everything. Perhaps if I made the question about her faith in me.

“No,” she breathed. “But I might.”

Slow and deliberate, I kissed my way across her cheek, pausing right at the edge of her mouth. “Would I let a tree hurt you?”

My upper lip touched her lower lip with the slightest pressure imaginable.

“No,” she sighed. It was a soft sound, almost a coo.

Now my lips moved lightly against hers as I whispered, “You see, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”

“No,” she agreed with a shuddering sigh.

And then, though I’d only been intending to overwhelm her, I found myself wholly overcome.

It didn’t feel like my mind was in control. My body was as much in command as it was when I hunted—impulse and appetite overthrowing reason. Only now my desire was not for the old needs I’d had time to master. These were new passions, and I hadn’t yet learned how to govern them.

My mouth crushed too roughly against hers, my hands strained her face closer to my own. I wanted to feel her skin against every part of me. I wanted to hold her so close that we could never be separated.

This new fire—a fire without pain, that ravaged only my ability to think—raged even hotter when her arms wrapped tightly around my neck and her body bowed into mine. Her heat and her pulse were fused against my own form from chest to thigh. I was drowning in sensation.

Her lips opened against mine, with mine, and it seemed every part of me could think of nothing but deepening that kiss.

Ironically, it was my basest instinct that saved her.

Her warm breath surged into my mouth, and