Edward had warned me to stay well away from her and admittedly at first I hadn’t understood his warning, I had felt slightly offended. True, I wasn’t as strong as he was at fighting my temptations but I did go to a school filled with every kind of sweet temptation, every once in a while I would find myself imagining different scenarios which included me luring one of them somewhere inconspicuous and well, you know… feasting in their exuberant elixir of life as a result of my witty and alluring charm. Of course, none of this had ever happened because Edward was always there to kick my chair before my thoughts got the best of me and I started acting rather than planning.

As Bella blushed at something that Alice had told her, something along the lines of, “You do smell great, I never noticed before,” I understood. She smelled so sweet- and when she blushed, that only made her smell even more maddeningly delicious, especially when you could see the blood patches at her cheeks taunting you and daring you to just reach out and- ‘Snap out of it!’ I told myself as I unleashed a wave of my power to sooth her nervousness, but most of all her embarrassment, for my sake, before those rosy cheeks could sing to me more of that maddeningly tempting taunt that they had began to sing so abruptly. Edward frowned at me but I simply shrugged, and with slight surprise I noticed that Bella was looking at me with a look that could be saying nothing but ‘thank you’. Edward must have told her I assumed.

Esme’s next words saved me from my personal demon.

            “Edward, why don’t you play for her?” with some amusement I noticed that her tone carried a tenor of smugness. I observed that her smugness seemed to resurface every time Edward touched Bella or held her close.

            “I thought you said I shouldn’t show off,” Edward objected tauntingly with a smile. Bella, it seemed, wanted nothing more than to hear him play. She already regarded him with such high esteem that she seemed to think that he could do anything and everything, perfectly at that. I had chuckled when she mentioned this.