Breaking Dawn   ::   Meyer Stephenie

I wanted the complete experience before I traded in my warm, breakable, pheromone-riddled body for something beautiful, strong… and unknown. I wanted a real honeymoon with Edward. And, despite the danger he feared this would put me in, he’d agreed to try.

I was only vaguely aware of Alice and the slip and slide of satin over my skin. I didn’t care, for the moment, that the whole town was talking about me. I didn’t think about the spectacle I would have to star in much too soon. I didn’t worry about tripping on my train or giggling at the wrong moment or being too young or the staring audience or even the empty seat where my best friend should be.

I was with Edward in my happy place.



2 LONG NIGHT



“I miss you already.”

“I don’t need to leave. I can stay. . . .”

“Mmm.”

It was quiet for a long moment, just the thud of my heart hammering, the broken rhythm of our ragged breathing, and the whisper of our lips moving in synchronization.

Sometimes it was so easy to forget that I was kissing a vampire. Not because he seemed ordinary or human—I could never for a second forget that I was holding someone more angel than man in my arms—but because he made it seem like nothing at all to have his lips against my lips, my face, my throat. He claimed he was long past the temptation my blood used to be for him, that the idea of losing me had cured him of any desire for it. But I knew the smell of my blood still caused him pain—still burned his throat like he was inhaling flames.

I opened my eyes and found his open, too, staring at my face. It made no sense when he looked at me that way. Like I was the prize rather than the outrageously lucky winner.

Our gazes locked for a moment; his golden eyes were so deep that I imagined I could see all the way into his soul. It seemed silly that this fact—the existence of his soul—had ever been in question, even if he was a vampire. He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or his glorious body.

He looked back at me as if he could see my soul, too, and as if he liked what he saw.

He couldn’t see into my mind, though, the way he saw into everyone else’s. Who knew why—some strange glitch in my brain that made it immune to all the extraordinary and frightening things some immortals could do. (Only my mind was immune; my body was still subject to vampires with abilities that worked in ways other than Edward’s.) But I was seriously grateful to whatever malfunction it was that kept my thoughts a secret.