The fragrance coming off your skin... I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you... alone."
And look at us now, I thought. I got an erection from thinking it.
"And then I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow..."
He looked up then at my expression as I tried to absorb his bitter memories. His golden eyes scorched from beneath his lashes, melting them with deadly and hypnotic rays.
"You would have come," he promised.
I felt like I already had. "Without a doubt," I said breathlessly.
He frowned down at my hands, releasing me from the force of his state. "And then, as I tried to rearrange my schedule in a pointless attempt to avoid you, you were there—in that close, warm little room, the scent was maddening. I so very nearly took you then. There was only one other human there, Ms. Crabnutt—so easily dealt with."
I shivered in the warm sun, seeing my memories anew through his superior eyes, only now grasping that even from the beginning, he'd wanted me.
"But I resisted. I don't know how. I forced myself not to wait for you, not to follow you from the Forks High School. It was easier outside, when I could not smell you anymore, to think clearly, to make the right decision. I left the others near home—I was too ashamed to tell them how weak I was, that I lusted for the flesh of a stripling whelp such as yourself; they only knew something was very wrong—and then I went straight to Carlisle, at the hospital, in his office, to tell him I was leaving."

271

Chapter 13

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