Chapter 12

Chapter 12- Down for a Count and Up for a Game

 

There’s things in life that stick with you.  The first time you tie your own shoelaces, the first time you knock one out of the park to loaded bases, the first time a boy kisses you (the handsomely awkward JD du Rone at senior prom), the first time you make love with the vamp you love.

The nightmarish first time your funny uncle puts hands on you in ways he shouldn’t.

I was bending over sliding on my ballet flats when I had a memory of the last so strong I had to sit back down on the bed.

“What’s wrong, lover?”

Eric’s big hands were sliding tenderly over my back and up to cup my shoulders.  I leaned back into him desperately, trying my hardest not to tremble off another remembered touch.

“You are shaking.”  Apparently I had failed.

He sounded stuck somewhere between perplexed and pissed, and I felt the tension behind his palms as he turned me to face him.  I could feel the heat of his eyes but was cowardly enough to not want to meet them directly.

“You are afraid.”

He sounded appalled now, and not a little unsure.  My eyes flashed up to his, and the unreasonable guilt I saw there had me scrambling to find the right words for my sordid thoughts.

“It’s not you,” I assured him, raising up a hand to cup his cool cheek.  “If anything you make me feel braver about life, like I can face anything.”

The words seemed to settle him; the touch of his skin definitely settled me.

“But there is something, and it is no small thing.”

I choked up on the gentleness offered, and the cruelty remembered.  I studied Eric’s concerned face intently as I searched for my tongue.  Was I going to do this?  Was I going to tell my thousand-year-old killer of a lover that my Uncle Bartlett had molested me?  Could I even find the courage to put the words to air?

But weren’t they here already, polluting the space between us?  My family skeleton shoving its way out of the closet into the bed I had just shared with the vampire I loved?  A vampire Hadley had assured me would murder on my behalf.

“You have to promise to keep off the violence unless I give the say so.”

The monster flashed behind Eric’s eyes on the words, but was tamed down just as fast.

“I think you need to tell me what this is about, my Sookie,” he said softly.  His blue irises were glowing with a persuasion that I easily ignored.

“Promise first,” I insisted.  He was not getting the runaround on something as important as this.

“I swear it,” he said, lifting both my hands up in his big palms and raising my knuckles to his mouth.  There was ferocity in his voice on the promise, and tenderness to the touch on the kiss.

“Okay then.”  I took a huge breath.

“I had a… funny uncle.”

The silence after was full of the violence of Eric’s understanding.

“I do not have to kill him.”

Eric sounded grimly possessed, and there was no missing the emphasis on ‘have.’  His body was coldly absent of life, and I found the sight far more terrifying than I would have a tensed fist.  Death was threatening, if not at me, then for me.  How strange that I took it as a comfort.  How bizarre that I felt my tension slipping away under the deadly weight of his lifeless palms on my thighs.

“Believe me, Eric, I am tempted.”  I hesitated.  “But he’s my uncle by birth if not by acknowledgment.”

“You waste your generosity of spirit on such a creature.”  His tone was violently venomous on the last word.

“There is nothing generous in me at all towards him,” I corrected softly.  “If I’d courage enough I’d see him buried myself.  But I refuse to go compromising the better parts of myself on him.  The payback isn’t worth what my soul’s sure to pay.”

Eric was doing some intense mental juggling off that last statement.  I could see it even for his dead expression as he watched me, and when he spoke again he didn’t disappoint.

“Sookie, I am used to riding herd on monsters.  This…  blood relative of yours is no exception.”

“What does that even mean?”

Eric’s own monster refilled his eyes with a quiet vengeance, and the words that followed sounded all the scarier for their softness.

“It means I can make it so he survives the rest of his pathetic existence with nightmares tormenting him.”

I was quiet for a long while.  It wasn’t the kind of silence that’s full of hard thinking, but of trying desperately not to.  Years of suppressed memories, years of denied pain, years of unrecognized rage.

Eventually Eric took the choice from me.

“I will hurt him.  The degree is up to you.”  There would be no negotiating with the vengeance I saw in his eyes, and no squashing the relief I felt reflected in my own.

“Nightmares will do,” I decided with grateful reluctance.  “I just couldn’t order a man to death, no matter his sins.”

“I could,” he threatened softly, eyes glowing like a vamp hell bent on a crusade of cruelty.  “Especially given the survivor of the sins.”

Not victim, but survivor.  A simple choice of meaning that meant everything.

I almost told him then.  That I loved him, that my whole world had shifted with him as the focus.  The words were like to fall off my tongue, my mouth was so brimming with them, but something stopped me.  Some tiny part of me that warned he’d count the words among his possessions rather than hold them in his heart.  Not yet, it whispered.  Not just yet.

So I kissed him instead, and willed him to feel my unspoken truth.  His hands tightened in my hair in response, then softened to tender in a flash.  He cradled me in his lap like an oversized doll, soothing away my tension with his skillful hands, erasing the nasty aftertaste of my confession with the sweet solace of his mouth.

“Okay,” I breathed after, smiling senselessly into his beautiful glowing face.  I just wasn’t going to think about Uncle Bartlett anymore, not even to feel satisfaction for whatever hell Eric would wreck his way.  I had a job to do, and the night wasn’t going to get any longer on my account.

“Give me five minutes.”

I dashed off to the bathroom to wash up and fix my makeup, though from the glow I saw in the mirror I could have gone without the latter.

“We do not have to go back to Fangtasia,” Eric said carefully when I came back, his eyes roaming over me in a bizarre cocktail of considerate lust.

“Of course we do,” I disagreed passionately to vent my response to the Look.  I had been appalling disappointed on coming back and finding him dressed.

“You’re paying me a miraculous fortune for using my brain, and I refuse to let some nasty black memories spoil it.  Besides the fact, all your people are gonna start wondering whether I’m yours or using you.”

“I am sheriff,” he said haughtily.  “They do as I say, and wonder as I allow them.”

Was this to be something else I loved about him?  His complete ability to ignore the concerns of others if they didn’t matter to him?  Honor by degrees, I supposed, and a certain haughtiness, but I couldn’t deny that I rather liked his significant attention to my comfort and pleasures.  Even if it meant the frequent exclusion of the rest of the world.  Truth be told, maybe especially then.

“Sure,” I agreed with a sugary false sincerity that sent his eyebrow twitching.  “But we’re going.”

Eric’s eyebrow popped devilishly at the declaration, but he followed me out of the room and down into the kitchen.  The garage door was still open as Eric had left it, and there was a yellowing hatchback parked to one side of the driveway when we got outside.

“Looks like my car made it,” I said with no little irony as Eric flashed opened the door to the corvette.  I ignored the scathing glance he cast its way as I slid into the leather bucket seat.  It was hard not to note the contrasts to my own when it sat nearby looking so bereft of life.

“Hadley called and informed me your Gran ordered you to go car shopping tomorrow,” Eric said when we were pulling out of his community.

He drove like he made love, I thought whimsically.  With absolute focus, supremely confident hands and no wasted motions.  I stared at his fingers sliding along the steering column as he made the turn, and it was like looking at a recipe for perfection.  I sighed and watched his wide blue eyes shift to mine on a knowing smirk.

“I wouldn’t say ordered so much as strongly suggested,” I murmured as he stole my hand onto his lap before shifting down into fourth.

Eric made a noncommittal sound that bore a remarkable resemblance to snickering.

“Just hush, you,” I scolded, slapping playfully at his thigh.

“I am not judging.  My own mormor was also a woman to be obeyed.  Even my father the chieftain was loathe to cross her.”

As openings go, this was a convenient one.

“So your throne I saw you on at Fangtasia was like inherited, and not just for show?”

“The position would have been inherited on my father’s death, yes, but I was made vampire first.  Why do you ask?”

“I noticed the platform was missing is all.”

I shifted uncomfortably in his seat as I flashed back on my earlier unease on realizing he’d removed it for my sake.  The discomfort was even greater now I knew it truly was his throne, and not just some showcase statement piece.

“Ah,” he said with great satisfaction, as if I had just solved some great puzzle for him.

“Ah?” I prodded.

“I… sensed in the club that you were feeling at odds.”

“Sensed?”  I was starting to get an uneasy feeling that Eric was keeping a deliberately open secret from me.

“You have had my blood,” he hedged.

“And that’s like an emotion detector or something?”

“It allows me to sense your emotions, yes, as well as your wellbeing and your location.  And allows you to sense mine as well,” he added as generously as one might a diamond tennis bracelet.  I almost wished it had been, so I’d have had something to throw in his smug face.  I’d bitten Eric during sex, but that had been after Fangtasia.  The first time I’d tasted his blood had been when I’d kissed him in my booth in Merlotte’s.  Right after I’d told him a vampire hating serial killer might be after me.  Which meant…

“So in Merlotte’s, when you bit your tongue…”

I trailed off on the actualization.  His face said it all.  I should have known, really I should have, because what vampire worth his salt accidentally bites anything?  Especially himself.  Mr. High-handed vamp had struck again, and my temper was gearing up for some striking of its own.

“Let’s go with calculated impulsivity,” he said as we were pulling into Fangtasia’s parking lot.

“Only if you’re okay with being downgraded to qualified mistrust,” I snapped on snatching my hand back from his lap.  “It’s an invasion of my privacy, Eric, and you did it all the same.”

“You did not hear me complaining when you bit me during sex,” he purred pissily.

“You liked it!” I hissed heatedly.

“I loved it, but the ‘invasion’ goes both ways Ms. Stackhouse.”

“Last time I checked you were my boyfriend, not Big Brother.”

Eric quirked his brow snottily at that before sliding out of the car.  I followed with a vengeance.

“I swear to God, Eric Northman,” I warned savagely on slamming shut his door.  “Cock your eyebrows at me just one more time over this and I will shave them off while you are dead for the day.”

“They will only grow back.”  His cockily handsome face lacked any concern over my threat.

“Well then they’re a safe bet for my fury,” I hissed.  “I mean…  This is just…  The gall Eric!  Did you even think about how I would feel?”

“You would not be feeling anything if you were a corpse,” he disclaimed arrogantly.

A pig’s eye if I was going to let that slide on an excuse out of his dead mouth.

“Is that so?  Well what the hell are we even doing here then?”

Eric began muttering at me fiercely in some guttural language, eyes glowing like possessed sapphires under the parking lot lamp.

“Uh uh buddy,” I gritted, jabbing him in his stone chest as I glared right on back.  “Don’t you even think about shouting at me unless it’s in English!”

“I will not risk you!”

My own tumultuous emotions aside, there was no mistaking the fear and frustration rolling off Eric as he glared down at me.  We stood toe to toe, defiantly vulnerable vampire, determinedly hardheaded human, desperately exchanging cross-fire over the same point.  But it was an important point, damn it.  I would not compromise on my independence, not to this degree, not even for safety’s sake.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No,” I ground out even as Eric boomed “Yes!”

“Well then.”  Pam’s sultry drawl came out silky with humor.

Eric hissed at her in foreign fury.  She merely popped an elegant brow.

“I’ll just go tell the others it’ll be awhile longer.”

“No!” I insisted with such force they both snapped around to look at me.  I was pissed, by God, but I was bound and determined to be a professional.  I had promised myself on signing his paperwork that I would not let my relationship with Eric interfere with my job, and if there was ever a promise I intended to stand by, it was this one.  For both our sakes.

“I need to earn my keep,” I said with forced calm.

Eric looked about ready to spit nails on that statement.

“Please Eric,” I requested softly on gently squeezing his arm.  “Let’s just focus on business until cooler heads prevail.”

“And then we will talk.”

It almost sounded like a question rather than a command.  I’ll give him points on that.  Maybe, just maybe, he knew he’d done wrong.  Or maybe he just knew when to give on getting caught.  I scowled at the back of his perfectly lovely butt as he took long strides into the employee entrance of the club.

“So…  how did it go?” Pam asked coyly as we fell in behind him.

“Oh, just fine.  Amazing.  Fireworks like fucking Fourth of July.  ‘Til he let slip that he’d tricked me into drinking his blood.”  My own was still boiling on the knowledge.

There was a considering pause.

“Did he?”

I slid my gaze sideways.  Pam was studying me with intense curiosity, her normal smirk dimmed to a smile that was almost… worried?  Surely not.  Eric could most definitely take care of himself.

“What…  that’s not like, a thing?”

“Not a common one.  Blood bonds are permanent.  Humans are not.”

Well, that sure had snapped the wind out my sails of fury.  I followed her through the back door of Fangtasia feeling like someone had smacked me between the eyes with a mallet.

“-will start in the office,” Sheriff Northman was ordering as we came in.  “Bruce first, then Ginger.”

“That human is never where I leave her,” Pam drawled irritatedly on reaching Eric’s side.  There were a couple of other vampires milling around, sprinkled with a small assortment of humans.  I was guessing Ginger wasn’t among them.

“The accountant, either,” Longshadow said as he lifted a couple of True Bloods from the microwave and set them on the bar.  Eric ignored his, much as he was ignoring me.  I could feel a tic starting in my left eye off struggling not glare him to the true death.

“Chow,” demanded Sheriff Northman.

A tall, slender Asian vampire shrugged off the wall and glided forwarded.  He was covered in what I took to be Yakuza tattoos, and extremely handsome in the face.  Great.  Yet another sexy Supe.  I was sure to get a complex if this kept up.

“Sheriff,” he graveled on inclining his head.

“Search the premises for the barmaid and the accountant, then meet us in the office.”

“I’ll just go check the ladies’ room,” I offered.  I wanted a minute or two away from Eric’s cool-eyed stonewalling anyways.

I spun out of the room to Pam slinging scolding sounds at Eric in rapid fire foreign.  I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought he was acting like a jerk off.  I pushed into the bathroom with a satisfied smile, and stopped immediately in my tracks.  I’d have recognized the noises coming out of the stall even if I’d still been a virgin.  Grunts, groans, moist slapping flesh.  It sure felt better than it sounded, I now knew, but still… Ugh.

“Jesus, Ginger!”

My eyebrows sky rocketed over the desperately needy tone.  I heard a high-pitched giggle, then, “Oh, Bruce.”

Well, two for the price of one, it seemed.  I cleared my throat dramatically, and the noise fell to a nervous silence.  I could hear their brains working overtime hoping I wasn’t Pam or worse, Eric.

Shit!  Shit!  He’ll never fuck me now!

Ginger was a nastily loud broadcaster.

“Y’all two are needed in the office,” I said in as circumspect a voice as I could manage.  I heard nervous fumbling and hasty zippers and shuffling clothes.

Must be Eric’s new consultant.  Oh God I hope she doesn’t tell him.  I’m already in deep over the missing money as it is.  Who the fuck would steal from a vamp anyway?  What kind of suicidal stupid would you have to be to risk it?

Bruce the accountant was terrified with it back in his pants, and I couldn’t help feeling a touch of sympathy now that I knew he was innocent.

“I’ll just go tell Eric you’re making a call.”

I fled the bathroom on mental waves of gratitude.

I walked into the office with blushing cheeks that turned crimson on seeing Eric stretched out off the edge of his desk, long legs spread out in what shouldn’t have looked like an invitation for the cool expression on his face.  But this was the man who had just rung about a half dozen orgasms out of me not an hour earlier, and my body hadn’t quite caught up on the difference.  I watched his nostrils flare even as his eyes lit with lust.

Now that I was aware of our blood connection, I recognized the sensations pulsing at me.  Desire dark enough to be called craving, and tender enough to be named thrall.  I couldn’t help feeling a bit smug over holding such power over such a power.  I walked towards him high on it, and his blue eyes snapped briefly with humor before he reached out his hand and flitted his fingertips over my cheek.  Love washed through me on the gesture, drowning out the last vestiges of my anger, and I sighed out loud for us both.

“Ms. Stackhouse,” he lilted on understanding, and I took my place by his side.

“It wasn’t Bruce,” I said as I leaned against his hip.  He remained the stoic faced business vamp, but I could feel the comfortable affection renewed between us.

“You are certain?”

“As I can be without actually having seen the money lifted.  I listened in on him while he was… making a phone call.”

I was certain Eric felt my embarrassment on the lie, but as he left it alone it was quickly replaced by gratitude.  Maybe we could work through this whole no emotional privacy thing after all.  Bruce and Ginger came in after that thought, Ginger on a slutty strut, Bruce on a sheepish shuffle.  I watched Eric’s nostrils flare briefly, and felt ridiculous for even trying to lie for them.  Sheriff Northman didn’t miss a trick, coming or going.

“Go home to your wife, Bruce,” Eric dismissed immediately, and Bruce recoiled as if he’d been slapped.  His gaze bounced desperately between us, and I shook my head more in censure than denial.  Not that I really cared.  It served him right to be caught when he had a waiting wife tending the home fires.

Longshadow pushed off the wall with popped fangs and an incensed glare.

“You’d trust a human to clear the fat one?”

“My Sookie is a telepath of considerable skill.”  My name came out sounding erotically competent for his possessive pride.  There was no missing the threat lingering in the air as Eric stared pointedly at Longshadow’s fangs.  There was a flash second hesitance, and then Longshadow’s lips snapped dramatically shut over his blunt-edged teeth.

Sheriff Northman walked softly and carried a big damn stick.

“Ginger, you sit.”

She was smirking as she strutted over and tossed herself into the seat in front of Eric, crossing her legs provocatively enough to flash unders.  Eric ignored her, so I decided to do the same.  I sat in the chair across from her and reached for her wrist to bring the signal in better.  She snatched it immediately back.

“Don’tcha fucking touch me,” she sneered.

Freaky fucking whore.

My lips convulsed in humor more than hurt.  Considering her hands had just been down the pants of Bruce the Adulterer Accountant, I really didn’t give two hoots on her personal opinion of me.  Nor did I want to touch her.  But I had a job to do.

I reached for her again, and she started to get out of the chair.

“Pam,” Sheriff Northman intoned, sounding bored with irritation.  She was over by Ginger in a flash, yanking her arms out towards me by the wrists.  I circled the left one quickly with my fingers, wanting to get this over and done with fast.

“Did you steal $60,000 from Fangtasia’s books?”

“’Course not.”

Truth, though I did catch an image of her lifting a pair of black panties out of the gift store.  I gave it a pass for now.

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but there was enough uncertainty in her brain to have me rooting further.  She knew something, I was sure.  I peered deeper inside her head and found a wall of static.

“There’s like a- a buzzing blank spot.  Like a TV on a bad signal.”

“Glamour,” Pam said.  Boy did she sound pissed, and I was getting enough off Eric to know she wasn’t the only one.  Glamour could only mean a vampire was behind the theft, or at lease involved in it.  Humans might have twitched on the implication; the vampires had gone still to death.  I glanced my way around their faces and found them all lifeless on guarding their graves.  I sure never wanted to play poker with this crowd.

So where did that leave us?  Anyone stupid enough to steal from Eric must have slipped up somewhere.  I did some quick mental juggling, and nodded my head at Pam to release Ginger.

“Bring in her closest co-worker.”  I was relatively certain Ginger didn’t have many of what you might call friends.

Belinda the waitress looked weary for waiting, but she had enough juice left to smile blinding adoration at Eric.  Her mouth was a full bordering on vulgar, and offset rather intriguingly by round tortoiseshell glasses.  There was a pair of oversized fang marks painted garishly on her neck, and several real ones peeking out below the collar of her gothic shift dress.  I’d have gotten a nose bleed standing in the black platform boots she was wearing.

“Master,” she breathed respectfully.  I shot Eric a look and felt more than saw his lips twitch with humorous disdain.

She sat immediately when Eric commanded her to and didn’t make a fuss when I reached for her wrist.  Fan girl fawning aside, I was liking her already.

“What vamp was Ginger seeing?”

“Anyone that would have her,” she blurted out bluntly.

My lips jerked a nervous notch higher off first-hand knowledge of that statement.

“Any vamp in particular?”

“Um, there was a trucker out of Reston a few months back.  But lately…“  She trailed off for preservation’s sake, but I saw his face even without the words.

My gaze flew to Longshadow, but he wasn’t where my eyes had last left him.

Nope, he was much closer indeed.

I threw up my arm in desperate defense, even as I went flying back out of the chair.  We hit the floor with a violence that had my skull smacking hard enough to shock me momentarily blind.  So I didn’t see when Longshadow tore into me, but Lord help me, did I ever feel it.  It was like getting ripped open by flame-edged razorblades.  I screamed on the contact, and by the end note I was gurgling on goo.

It took a couple seconds, but as I lay on the floor listening to the shriek and clatter of Belinda’s runaway heels it dawned on me that I was not, as the situation should have merited, dead.  I looked up through the stringy, bloody mess that used to be Longshadow to see Eric standing over me with a hammer, a stake, and a murderous expression.

Nobody spoke.  Nobody moved.  Only one person in the room was breathing, and she was sure grateful of the fact.

I struggled painfully to my feet.  Nobody offered to help, not even Eric, but given the way they all stood staring at me with horrific hunger in their eyes, I was sure grateful for that fact as well.  I couldn’t even imagine what I looked like to them, soaked to the skin in blood and flakey bits of my would-be murderer.  Like a gravy-soaked biscuit to a fat man coming off a fast.

“Pride goeth before the staking,” I managed with hurtful humor as I cradled my chewed up arm to my chest.  Good jolly jeez, did it ever hurt.

“He bled into you.”

Eric sounded more than a little pissed at the fact.  Even with the violent tension running the room, I couldn’t help myself for wanting to comfort him.

“You taste better,” I assured him, stretching a bloody hand up to stroke through his long hair.

His eyes went even darker at my touch, but for a whole different shade of reason.

“Out,” he commanded to the room at large, and I saw first hand just how fast Sheriff Northman’s vampires move to orders.

“I want you,” he said in a dangerously dead tone.

“Eric,” I soothed cautiously.  “I’m hurt.”  I glanced sorrowfully down the bloody front of my once pretty dress.

“And gross.”

“It is healing,” he said on ignoring the gruesome state of my ensemble.

“Huh,” I said, staring down at my arm.  Already the bite was looking a little less vicious.

“How’s that even possible?”

“It is a benefit of my blood.”

“Some benefit,” I murmured, staring down into the shredded mess of my arm.  I swear I could practically see it healing itself.  Fascinating.  Maybe if it tilted my head just a little to the left…

“I can heal you the rest of the way but there will be other…  side effects.”

I glanced up from my macabre fascination at that.

“Like what?”

“Our attraction will grow stronger off every drop.”  I gave him a long sideways look.  Even the pain in my mauled arm couldn’t stop the rising tide of lust.

“I can’t see how that’s even possible.”

“Perhaps not, but if you drink any more of my blood you will be able to feel it.”

“First aid aphrodisiac,” I muttered, thinking hard.  I’d have to be a crazy person not to question how fast this was all happening.  Pam had told me a blood bond was permanent, and Eric had just told me it could only get more intense with further exchange.

I had a sudden notion painful enough to shove my savaged arm from agony to ache.

“Eric, what all I’m feeling for you…”  I hesitated.  “My emotions are still mine, right?”

This was as close as tonight was going to take me to a heart’s confession.

“It is a sharing, not a possession,” he answered softly.  Sheriff Northman had slipped his stoic veneer, and the vamp facing me was a creature of uncertain passions.  I could feel his apprehension, his almost hurt over my hesitation.  More importantly, I could see it on his face, and staring at him, I knew all over again.

I loved Eric.  All of Eric, from high-handed vamp to stoic sheriff, to lavish lover.  If we’d have been on a traditional path, if we’d have been cruising along towards marriage, eventually I’d have been wearing his ring and carrying a vow ‘til death do us part.  What difference was there between a blood tie and a paper one?  Not much where I was sitting.  But we weren’t traditional on account of neither one of us being ordinary, and our relationship was bound to reflect that fact.

“Yes.”

His bloody wrist was at my mouth in a flash, his hand was up my skirt in a rush.  My underwear was shredded, my arm was stitched, and then he was shoving inside me, and he was big enough that my insides had to stretch for the motion.  I bucked at the sensation, clawed at his shoulders through his t-shirt, and he grabbed my hair and buried his face in it.  I could feel the tendons of his neck straining on the inside flesh of my left forearm, as hard as what he’d planted inside of me.

“Sookie,” he begged when I squirmed beneath him.  “A moment.”

“No,” I said, and sank my teeth into the side of his throat.  He roared to life, jerking my arms over my head and pounding me back into the wall with a ferocity offset by the wondrous sound of my name coming shaky off his lips.  I should have broken for it, it was so brutally intense, and when he sank fangs into the underside of my arm, I did.

But Eric wasn’t even close.  He knocked me higher three more times, forcing my face around by the hair so he could eye fuck me all the while during.  He bored into me as my mouth gaped and gasped, as my lashes fluttered and fell, as my hips rocked like a cradle possessed.  My blissed-out hands were sliding boneless from his waist before he finally exploded into me in a fierce fit of foreign sexy speak.  I sagged in reluctant relief, my senseless face sliding down his chest and into the curve of his shoulder.

When I got my words back, there was only one possible thing to say.

“You definitely taste better,” I sighed on licking my lips clean of sweet copper aftertaste.

At first I thought it a hiccup, the way his chest jumped spasmodically under my cheek.  But then I felt the telling rumble, and once again I was holding happily on to my favorite Viking as he laughed himself to Valhalla and back.

“I need you,” he said after with almost begrudging intensity.  And since he was still buried inside me half-cocked off an orgasm that had near to blown off the top of my skull, I was pretty sure we weren’t talking in the flesh.

I wrapped myself tighter around him and turned my face into the cool comfort of his neck.  Tenderness filled me as I breathed him in, as I reflected on the irony of being necessary to such a dangerous creature.  What was it I was giving him that no one else had?  I wasn’t sure, but it was his regardless.

“Well you have me,” I said softly, stroking the sides of his face soothingly.  “Any which way you need.”

I felt him stirring on the words, his hands gripping tighter on my hips.  His body rolled forward, and once again I was full of Eric.  I made a sound of desperation, and he forced my head back by my hair.

“Can you?” he lilted softly, blue eyes glowing with provocative challenge.

“Try and stop me,” I lilted right on back, arching myself into the wall of his chest.

He ended up doing a whole lot more than trying, and none of it had a thing to do with stopping.

 

At ten the next morning I was walking up to Alcide’s truck with a dreamy smile and a steamy cup.  I’d had a shower, three hours sleep and enough orgasms to make a porn star gloat.

It was the best morning of my life.

“Good morning,” I beamed on handing Alcide his coffee.

“So I see.”  His clear green eyes did a quick visual inventory of my face as he accepted the cup.

“Thanks,” he murmured over his first sip.

Guess Northman’s as good as they say.

“Better,” I agreed devilishly, and surprised Alcide into scalding his tongue.

“Hungry?” I asked brightly around my lip twitching smile.

“I good use a bite,” he said warily.

“Come on inside then and I’ll fix you a plate.”

I hummed as I whipped up scrambled eggs, thick sliced bacon and cheesy grits.  I would have been singing like a sitcom morning after if I’d have had the pipes for it.

Then Alcide had to go open his mouth on a closed brain and spoil it.

“Cast iron, huh?  I’d have expected high end Teflon for Northman.”
“Well he knows me well enough to have bought me cast iron,” I snapped back as I dumped Asswipe Alcide’s eggs unceremoniously on his plate.  “So eat and be grateful.”

There were several moments of ear ringing silence before Alcide worked up the courage to speak again.

“That wasn’t well said of me,” he murmured apologetically.

“Might as well have called me second-rate goods,” I scolded on slamming down his grits hard enough to splatter.

He winced on feeling, not for show, and it went a long ways to cooling my temper.

“I’m sorry,” he said with obvious sincerity, and after several seconds of glaring him restless, I gave an accepting nod.

“Alrighty then.”

“But I have to tell you, what I’m seeing between the two of you ain’t exactly jibing with what I’ve seen of him before.”

Alcide looked deadly serious over the statement, serious enough to send the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.  He was warning me, I realized with perverse fondness.

But what Alcide didn’t seem to understand, and what I was just getting close to, was that Eric would rather risk losing me than seeing me hurt.  I’d had some time to think this morning after he’d gone to ground for the day.  Eric had known when he’d given me his blood that I was going to be furious, maybe even furious enough to leave him over it, just as he’d known we’d remain connected regardless.  He’d known, and he’d done it anyway for my sake.  Just as he’d killed a vampire over me last night.  It wasn’t the missing money that had had Eric reaching for his stake.  Eric had been pissed when he’d learned it was a vampire; I’d felt that well enough through our blood bond.

But pissed was paltry compared to what he’d felt when he’d seen Longshadow going for my throat.

“Maybe you weren’t looking hard enough.”

“I’m looking hard enough now,” he said by way of disagreement.  “And if Northman’s got it in him to hold on to someone like you, I’ve got it in me to keep a hold of my prejudices.”

“Nobody else gets to see him like I do,” I murmured, dropping my eyes as I filled my own plate.

“It says something that he lets you,” he said on shoveling up a mouthful of eggs, and I flashed him a grateful smile.

“Tastes great,” he said around a blissful sigh.

“When’s the last time someone cooked you homemade breakfast?”

“My ex wasn’t exactly domestically thoughtful.”

I caught a visual flash of bed tousled black hair and slumberous doe eyes belonging to none other than my best friend, and had a pretty good idea where Alcide had spent the remainder of last night.

I sat down at the table with my coffee and gave Alcide a motherly smile.

“So you and Tara, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said with a sheepish gleam in his eye.

“She’s been through it,” I warned him.  “You be good to her.”

“Oh, I know.  We talked for near on four hours last night.  She’s a hell of lady.”

The fact that Alcide had called Tara a lady after what I’d gleaned of their sexcapades the night before made me think a whole lot higher of him.

“Well you certainly don’t look worse for the wear off sleep.”

“Weres have great stamina,” he grinned roguishly.

“So do vamps,” I shot back playfully.

He gave a good-humored smirk.

“So what’s on the agenda today?  More shopping?”

I winced dramatically.

“Shopping,” I agreed with all the enthusiasm someone might dredge up for pulled teeth.  “I promised my Gran I’d look into trading my car in.”

“Well, at least it’s cars this time.  I can offer a thing or two more in that department.”

“And by more, you mean besides teasing over sundries?”

“Besides,” he agreed with a sheepish chuckle.

 

Forty-five minutes later we were pulling up at the dealership, Alcide in his pickup and me in my beleaguered little hatchback.  Eric had left a recommendation for the place on what I was fondly beginning to consider ‘my morning note.’

 

My Lover,

Enjoy yourself today, as I promise you will enjoy yourself after dusk.  Buy something saucy enough to make my corvette jealous.

Yours,

E

 

Eric wanted me to enjoy car shopping.  I only wanted to enjoy Eric.  I sighed senselessly as I turned off my engine, then got out to join Alcide in a walk towards the showroom.

“Wish I knew these guys more’n then off reputation, but these aren’t exactly my stomping grounds,” he said as we were walking.  He had matched his long stride to mine with surprising ease.

“You’re not out of Shreveport?”

“Over the line in Jackson.”

Jackson, Mississippi was about an hour drive off from Shreveport, and another forty-five minutes to my house.

“How’d you end up working for Eric then?”

“He’s had some dealings with my pops,” he said vaguely on opening the door to the dealership.  He didn’t say anymore, but I caught off the edges of his brain that his dad had some sort of gambling problem.

The air conditioning hit us like a cold fist, but it wasn’t the temperature shock that had us staring wide-eyed at the little man plodding cheerfully towards us.  He was five feet if he was an inch, a rolly polly fellow wearing a lime colored linen suit and a mad scientist smile.  His thinning hair was sticking up in wispy tuffs over his gleaming scalp, and his tiny spectacles were tilting down his round nose at a precarious angle.  His wing-tipped shoes were the color of ripe oranges, his tie was the color of a lemon drop.  He looked like Benjamin Franklin overcome by citrus.

“Gosh,” I whispered as he got closer.

Alcide grunted in startled response.

“Ms. Stackhouse!”

This greeting was offered with such enthusiasm that I had to fight the urge to turn around and search for someone more deserving.

“Um, yes,” I responded tentatively, and the strange little man grabbed my hand and starting pumping away.

“I’m Bob Henderson.  Mr. Northman called and told us to be expecting you today.  We are simply delighted you’ve chosen Beauford Chrysler Dodge Shreveport for all your automotive needs!”

Northman caught himself a hell of a beaut.

“Well Eric did tell me y’all were the best,” I cheered more cooperatively, and the little man simply beamed.

“Mr. Northman is a valued client with highly discernable tastes.”

I ignored Alcide as he smothered a not-so-discreet cough next to me.

“Now!”  Bob slapped his hands together hard enough to make me jump and Alcide chuckle.  I glared at Alcide with one eye and watched Bob briskly rub his hands together out the other.

“What precisely did you have in mind, Ms. Stackhouse?”

“Well…”  I shrugged sheepishly.  “I figured I’d know it when I saw it.”

Uh oh, I thought on seeing the salesman’s gleam enter the little man’s eye.  It seemed there was a bit of a shark lurking under the witless fashion sense.  Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who caught it.

“Why don’t you take us on a walk around and show us some of your best models?” Alcide interjected smoothly.

“’Course of ‘course!” Bob the salesman chuckled before starting off in a jolly lope.

“Thank God you’re here,” I whispered to Alcide on the aside as we followed in Bob’s happy wake.

“’Course of course,” was his gravelly reply, and I elbowed him on principle more than pissiness.

Our first stop was a powder blue Cadillac with white out rims.  Flecks of silver winked happily in the spring sunlight, and the chrome trim was bright enough to have me automatically readjusting my shades.  My first thought was that Jason would have loved it.

My second thought was that I’d rather be dead than drive it, much less own it.

“How about her?  Ain’t she a beaut?  MP3 dock, onboard On-Star, light proof trunk.”  Bob winked cheekily on that last remark.

“It’s a little… blue… for my tastes,” I finished weakly.  Bob squinted at the Cadillac in a newly considering light, then gave a resounding nod that sent his jowls jiggling.

“It is at that!  ‘Course any model we have in stock can have the trunk modified to suit.”

How bizarre was it that I was thinking light proof trunk while car shopping?  I was starting to feel a bit dazed, and we were only on car one.

“It’s not that bad,” murmured Alcide in understanding as we walked on.  “Just make a list as we go.”

“A list?”

“Yeah.  What amenities you want, color, perks, that sort of thing.”

“Uh huh.  You mean besides the light proof trunk?”

“Besides,” he agreed, and we grinned at each other wildly.

An hour later, and my grin had wilted to dim under glazed eyes.

I had seen every car on the lot, it seemed, and most all of them matched the nature of our eccentric salesman.  Quirky trade-in?  Come see Beauford Chrysler Dodge Shreveport!  The only thing I was even close to considering was a hybrid sedan that had been reduced on account of its leopard print paint job.  The repaint was well worth the ticket markdown, Bob the salesman had assured me.

“I’ve got a friend or two that’d get a kick out of it as is,” Alcide had said with enough tongue-in-cheek to have me giving him a hairy eyeball.

I’d sagged in relief when a pencil thin brunette came clunking out on Doc Martens to tell Bob he had a phone call.

“There’s a lot to choose from,” Alcide said sympathetically as we stepped inside for a drink break.

“I’m about to drain this bottle and spin it,” I muttered mulishly over my bottled water, and Alcide chuckled merrily in response.

Bob came bopping back from his phone call just as I was finishing my drink, and though I was wore out I couldn’t help but smile at his good cheer.  Poor tastes aside, he really was the most adorable man.

“Well, I saved the best for last, I’ll tell you.”

Alcide and I exchanged a doubtful look.

“Mr. Northman had it earmarked for you, but wanted to make sure you got to see the rest first.”

“He was here last night?” I asked, puzzled as we stepped back out into the heat.  How had he ever managed to pull that off?  We’d been together all evening, I’d thought.

“Two nights back,” Bob explained patiently.  “We have expanded nighttime hours to accommodate our expanding vampire clientele.”

Two nights back.  That meant that somewhere in between starting up our blood bond, grinding orgasms out of me in Merlotte’s parking lot, assigning my round-the-clock bodyguards, and ordering his family throne off to the backroom for my sake, he’d also taken the time to stop by a car dealership and check out vehicles for me.  I wondered idly if he’d called Gran or if Gran had called him, ‘cause it had happened one way or the other.  Of that I had no doubt.

I sighed in halfhearted frustration and full-hearted love.

Bob the salesman was staring at me with growing concern over his commission, and I brightened my smile to reassure him.

“Let’s see it then,” I agreed amiably, conceding to the inevitable.

“It really is the sweetest thing, and Mr. Northman figured it’d suit you to the ground.”

We rounded the corner of the building and came to a collective stop in front of a happy-hued Jeep.

I didn’t say anything at first.  Just stared.  If someone had bottled sunlight into a paint bucket, they couldn’t have come any closer than this.  The interior was white leather, the tires were fat and up to my chin.  There was a sunflower bobble head planted on the dash and a yellow happy face bouncy ball hanging on a rope of the rearview mirror.

For the second time in two days, I had fallen madly in love.

“Mr. Northman said he knew it was the one on sight.”

“Did he?” I murmured consideringly.  Did he really know me so well already?  And why was I even surprised?  And what kind of world did I live in now where I got senselessly mauled by vamp thieves by night, then seduced senseless by vamp thoughtfulness on the morning-after?  Happiness, I nickname thee inexplicable.

Bob the salesman, sensing an impending deal, was building up into his big pitch.

“The old widow Carter used to own it.  A bit of an eccentric, but a lovely woman.  Unfortunately she had her license pulled last week after a minor traffic incident-”

My horrified eyes flew over the exterior of my future car in a desperate search for damages.

“-Ran a red light,” Bob the salesman finished hurriedly.  “Or was it three?” he asked the air, drifting off on the question.  Alcide and I both stared owlishly at him until he returned.

“Well, doesn’t matter, I suppose.  Her son’s our best mechanic, and loves his Mama like nothing else.”

I nodded understandingly under his expectant look.

“How much?” I murmured, sliding my loving gaze back to the car.

He rattled off a number that rattled my financially prudent bones.

“It’s a bit pricey,” I said over the lump in my throat.  I could afford it now, no doubt about it, but should I?  A vehicle was a tool, not a trinket.

“Seeing you now standing next to it, I can see what Mr. Northman meant when he said you’d suit.”  He picked up my hand and set it gently on the window frame of the Jeep.  “You’re both visions of happy light.”

And from the light she put in Northman’s eyes, I’d say it shines off more than just her looks.

“Thank you, Mr. Henderson,” I managed fervently around my complimentary shock.

“No need for that, dearie,” he said gruffly on patting my hand.  “I may be a salesman, but truth’s on the house.  Well now, you go on and think about it,” he said, clearly knowing the wisdom of a salesman’s retreat.

Sweet as molasses with a face to match.

I stared after him, appalling close to tears over his unspoken kindness.

“You know,” I said eventually.  “People may say all sorts of nasty stuff about car salesmen, but I have to tell you it’s nice to meet a person who’s happy about my being associated with Eric.  Tickled pink even, even if it is mostly on account of the sale.”

I turned and looked up at a wary-faced Alcide.  He brain was pulsing with agitation over the possibility of my crying.  It seemed even Supe men had problems with wet-eyed females.

“You should hear all the sweet things he was thinking around the dollar signs.”

“Has it really been all that bad?” Alcide asked gently enough to have me overlooking our earlier discriminatory breakfast discussion.

“You didn’t grow up in a small town, did you?”

“No, and even if I had not many would have messed with me being as I’m a Herveaux.”

“That must have been nice,” I said wistfully, and he shrugged negligently.

“It had its moments, and its expectations.”

He paused after speaking to study my face carefully.

“I can’t imagine growing up with your gift would’ve been easy.”

“No, but I’m starting to grow into it,” I said, flashing back on my telepathy session the night before.  Despite the vampire mauling, I had enjoyed the sense of fulfilled purpose I had woken up with this morning.

I turned back to the car with rueful eyes.

“I really should just go with the sedan,” I said reluctantly.

“Is that what you want?” Alcide asked, reaching an oversized paw out to pat my lovely yellow Jeep.

“It’s what I should want.”

“It’s not one and the same.”

I glanced up at him consideringly on hearing his tone.  Yup.  We definitely weren’t talking about just cars anymore.

“Definitely not,” I agreed with a soft smile.  “But some things you just know from the heart.”

On that gentle admonishment, I turned back to the Jeep wishing I could part with money as easily as I did my affection.  Why did it have to be so pretty and pleasant and all but wearing a sign that said ‘Sookie’s Ride?’

Mr. Henderson came waddling back over then wearing a hopeful smile.

“Made your decision?”

“I’m on a bobbed-wire fence,” I admitted sorrowfully.

“Ah well…”  Mr. Henderson was going a bit pink in the face as he rummaged his oversized pockets.  Finally he made a victory ‘A ha!’ and pulled a familiar looking note out of his pocket.

“Mr. Northman told me to hand you this should you have a tough time making a decision in favor of this vehicle.”

I took the paper with burning curiosity, noting absently it was still sealed.

 

My Sookie,

Circumspect is for clothes, not cars.

Buy the Jeep.  Accept the tires.

E

 

“Tires?” I said stupidly over my melting insides.  “What tires?”

“Mr. Northman most generously prepaid for a new set for the vehicle of your choice,” said salesman Bob smoothly.

“I can’t let him do that,” I protested off instinctual pride.

Bob the messenger boy silently handed me another note.  It had a giant P.S. scrawled on top.  I tried to tell myself I was imagining the smug tilt to the letters as I was cracking the seal.

 

I told the salesman if you declined the tires he would not receive a bonus.

Nope.  Definitely not my imagination.  Wasn’t it just like him to blackmail me off my good nature?

“Mr. High-handed,” I muttered in pissy affection as my fingers worried wrinkles into the paper’s edge.

“Poor guy’s got it bad,” was all Alcide had to say.

I turned around and gave him a baffled look.

“’Poor guy’?” I drawled archly over his sudden change of heart.

Alcide gave a sympathetic nod.

“He bought you tires.”

I blinked confusedly.

“And he came out for a look around before sending you here.”

Bob the salesman was nodding in masculine agreement.

I blinked harder.

“It means he’s spending time thinking about what’s under you, and not just…”

Mr. Henderson and I both stared as Alcide trailed off on vicious roar of a blush.  How bizarre.  My day-old love life had made a werewolf blush.

“What I mean is, he’s thinking about what’s driving you around, not just…  Ah hell.“

Alcide’s eyes slid closed on embarrassment.

“Driving into me?” I finished in an overly innocent tone.  Mr. Henderson discreetly muffled his sudden cough into a lime green silk hanky.

“Yeah,” Alcide managed weakly.  “That.”

Understanding over the tires had softened my irritation to mush.   Flashbacks of ‘that’ had given me a wicked edge.  What prompted my next remarks came off some playful place between.

“I’m sure it’s a little bit of both,” I smiled impishly.  “Eric’s just wonderful at multitasking.”

Both the men were staring at me now, faces see-sawing between horrified humor and curious consternation.

“So about the Jeep,” I said, switching abruptly to brisk.  “Let’s talk light tight compartments.”