Southern Comfort: Chapter 22

Southern Comfort

Chapter Twenty Two

My mother only stays for two days.

Her next article in the nonprofit magazine she writes for is on Cambodia, so she's heading across the seas to experience the third world country to do the piece justice.

She apologizes that she's spending the next six months away from us, but both my brother and I are adults and she worked her ass off to raise both of us as a single parent. She's afraid that she will miss the wedding and for that I'm certain because whether or not I'm pregnant, I can't wait to be a Cullen. My mother and I spent the majority of her two day stay together in our own cocoon of mother and daughter bliss. It's not often that I get to see her, but knowing that she's not going to be in the same country as me for half a year has me feeling a little heart sick.

Edward spends the two days packing up his apartment so that he can move into my house. Once my mom leaves to visit with Emmett and his family, we will inform his family of our engagement so that I can enjoy the short time I have with my mother alone.

It's hard to sleep without him, but climbing into the guest bed with my mother helps. She spends each night rubbing soothing circles on my back, brushing my hair and even painting my nails. Things she says she missed out on doing when I was a child because she worked so much. I ensure her that I turned out great and we share a laugh, ceasing the conversation of my upbringing for the remainder of her stay.

She's always been a wonderful mother. Even growing up when she would miss something so important to my eight year old mind, like a elementary play or a parent teacher night, I didn't hold it against her because I knew she was doing it for us. My father didn't pay child support and she was a single mother that refused to live off of the government. I hope that when Edward and I do have children, I'm half the mother she was to me.

Edward and I drive her to the bus station because she refuses our insistence that we drive her all the way to Emmett's. Her departure is full of happy tears and sad goodbyes, and for the first time in my adult life, I let my mother know how proud I am of her and her accomplishments. I'll be sad that she can't make it to the wedding, but she laughs it off and jokes about the magic of photo shop. She'd rather have her hair back in my wedding photos anyway.

I stand at the bus station and watch her Greyhound bus disappear around the corner because I'm sad to see her go, even if her arrival did embarrass the heck out of me. I got annoyed over the past two days with her constant badgering about grandchildren and the fact that I'm sexually active, but I wouldn't change it for anything.

Edward and I spend a week rearranging my house to make it into our home. Gone is my battered dresser from when I was in junior high, but in its place is Edward's giant mahogany bureau with more drawers that I know what to do with. We've switched out my dingy old oven for the high-tech one he insisted we get so that I will cook more often and after the great debacle of Saturday night, my couch is at the local Good Will and he's practically replaced my entire living room set with his own because it's newer.

Most of our time is spent spring cleaning and donating things neither of us plan on using in the next year, but we manage to christen almost every viable surface of the apartment. I'm currently laying naked on his, I mean our coffee table in the living room, while he continuously thrusts inside of me, despite my pleas for release.

He's been insatiable for the past three days and I'm barely able to keep up with his stamina. He wakes me up and wants to make love, sometimes at the breakfast table before he leaves for the stable. If I'm home during his lunch break, he has me bent over the back of the couch after he eats a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and more than likely, our welcome home kiss when he's off of work ends up with my legs wrapped around his hips and my back against the wall by the front door. Showers have been joint and I spend the majority of the time I'm not working, while he is, sleeping because he has me up all night.

"Edward... please!" I beg between pants.

The hard stone of the coffee table is cold, but the sensation does wonders against my heated skin. When he first initially stripped me of my shirt and laid me down, I squealed. And then he entered me and the fire kindling deep inside erupted to battle. Ice cold and flaming heat. I'm surprised there wasn't steam coming up from around where my skin came in contact with the table.

Rather than answering me, he grabs my thighs and spreads them apart further so that his thrusts are deeper. My ass leaves the coffee table and he is almost standing up when he comes, erupting deep inside me and finally bringing me sweet relief.

"Not that I don't love it and all, but what is up with you this week?" I ask, waiting for him to lower my legs to the ground, but he doesn't. Instead he lifts them up higher so that I'm practically hanging upside down, still panting from our activities. "Edward! What the hell?"

"I heard this could help the sperm find the egg," he pants, pulling out of me.

"What?"

"I want a baby, Bells."

"Put my legs down, please," I sigh.

Edward is still for a second. A look of shame crosses his features as he sets my legs down and then sits on the couch himself. I sit up and grab his hands.

"Have you changed your mind about having a baby?" he asks in a voice so innocent it's hard to think it's coming from a full grown man.

"No, but I'd like to be married before I get pregnant. Is that why you've been jumping me every

time we're alone? To make a baby?"

"You're getting older, Bells." I pull my hand away to slap him, but he tightens his grip on me. "Don't take that the wrong way. You're getting older and pretty soon we'll be out of our time frame. I don't want to spend years in and out of fertility clinics. I want a family."

I look into his eyes in search for some sanity because the man has clearly lost his mind. Finding nothing but truth and innocence, I lean in and kiss his pouting mouth.

"I love you. You're stupid as hell, but I love you still."

And for the first night in almost a week, we fall asleep with our clothes on and I wake up with them on.