The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.

Well… don’t be offended, but you smell like a dog.

Of course, you’d warm up faster if you took your clothes off.

Billy wanted me to stay a safe distance from the most important person in my life. It turned out that his concern was, in the end, unnecessary. I was all too safe now.

It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. Now he's found you. You can't see the changes we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?

I stared into Jared's eyes, and the strangest thing happened. All the melting and melding I had just been through was shoved aside, into the smallest part of my body, the little corner that I took up physically. The rest of me yearned toward Jared with the same desperate, half-crazed hunger I'd felt since the first time I'd seen him here. This body barely belonged to me or to Melanie-it belonged to him.

Ian paused and leaned closer to me so that I couldn't seem to see anything around his face, just snow and sapphire and ink.