Chapter 6

 What’s Meant to be Heard Ain’t Always Said

Eric Northman was waiting in my driveway when I got home late from my shift.

I took notice of his moonlit handsomeness and tried to feel something other than exhaustion.  My early morning happy had faded under the news of Maudette Pickens’ death.  I had gone to high school with Maudette, and while I wasn’t close to her, I knew enough of her to feel pain at her loss.  I had spent most of the day struggling during the biggest rush Merlotte’s had seen since New Year’s, and on three hours sleep it had not been a pleasant experience.  It seemed everyone in Renard Parish had popped in the bar buzzing with the story, from mouths to minds; strangulation, I’d heard from one gleeful brain too many.

So I sat in of my car, weary for the impending encounter, trying to catch my body up with the facts.  I stared stupidly at Eric, wondering how it was I was being courted by a suped-up version of every teenage girl’s dream at 25.  Fantasy flowers.  Check.  Fantasy car.  Check.  Fantasy vampire.  Better double check.

Yeah, he really was that gorgeous.  And from the looks of it, he really wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I sighed, pushed open my door and got out to greet him.

He shoved off his car with a thick paper packet under his left arm and stalked lazily towards me. Six-feet-plus of Viking man flesh all intent on pillaging little ol’ me senseless.  Memories of last night’s kisses clashed with memories of Dawn’s bedroom tussle clashed with visions of him stretched out on the Corvette in the bright moonlight.  Fortunately, I was too tired to go there…

Pale, pumping-

No, seriously…

-rear side sculpture- 

…That will be quite enough of that, thank you kindly!

Eric came up on me while I was struggling with my overactive imagination, blue eyes glinting like he knew.  Which he probably did.

I decided to ignore us both.

 “Mr. Northman,” I politely intoned.

“Miss Stackhouse,” he politely mimicked.

 “Did Gran…”  I trailed off as I glanced at the house.

“Your grandmother has not come out yet, no.  I do not think she heard me.”

There was a question in his eyes I’d been asking myself a lot recently.  And if Gran hadn’t heard his Corvette…  I lifted my chin high, and glanced at the monstrously thick packet under his arm.

“Well, I guess it’s good y’all offer such good insurance, right?”

“Certainly,” he said smoothly, blue eyes shining with innocent intent.  Yeah, I get it Mr. Northman.  From now on you’re a Nike operator: Just Do It.

 “I got your flowers,” I said.  I glanced back at where they cheerfully engulfed my passenger seat, feeling a bit awkward for the motion.

“Did you?”  His pale skin glowed under the growing moon, his blue eyes twinkled wickedly with inappropriate humor.

“Yes, I-“  I cleared my throat.  Gran may not have been outside, but I sure enough heard her voice: ‘Sookie Stackhouse!  Where are your manners, girl!’

“They were lovely, thank you.”  My shoulders drooped as I realized I really couldn’t leave them in the car overnight.  My aching feet were screaming at the very idea of one extra step, but it was going to be hot tomorrow, and I didn’t want my daisies wilting.

Eric seemed to anticipate my need.

“Allow me,” he smoothly intoned.  Before I could protest, he flashed to my car and pulled open the door.  But once he had it open and his face angled downwards, he stilled to death and stared.

“Eric?” I said, poor feet forgotten as I hurried over to see what was wrong.

He was peering down at my passenger seat with the queerest expression.

“You… strapped in the flowers,” he said slowly, staring at my daisies like they’d morphed into crazy alien babies or something.

“Well, sure,” I said, squirming a bit.  “I didn’t want nothing happening to them.”

“That was… thoughtful,” he said, shifting his unfathomable eyes from the daisies to me.  Not for the first time, I wished I could hear his thoughts.

“Well, not as thoughtful as ‘turn-of-the-century Baccarat,’” I muttered, and he was suddenly grinning like a five-year-old on a holiday.  My breath caught at the sight.  Oh, my.  Had I thought monster Eric a threat?  Surely boyish Eric was much, much more dangerous.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted you to catch that or not,” he admitted as he unstrapped my daisies and set them into my outstretched arms.

“Yes, well…”  I cleared my throat, unsure whether I wanted him to know how I’d found out, or not.  If the flower girl hadn’t said something, the vase might have ended up with my hair bobs in it or something.

“…Antiques Road Show,” I finished weakly.

“Ah, yes,” Eric said with a satisfied nod as he arranged my flowers in my arms.  I kept a firm grip on the vase.

“Pamela and I watch this show often.  We have collected much over the years, and every now and again it is fun to reminisce.  The show is very interesting, but overall my knowledge is more reliable.”

“I’ll just bet,” I smirked.

“Mr. Northman!” my Gran called then from the porch, and I jumped hard enough to splash water up the edges of the vase.  It seemed our arrival had been noted.

“You come up here and give me a howdy, now!”

Eric’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, and I shrugged.  What Gran wants, Gran usually gets.  He turned sly at that response.  Uh oh.

“Eric-” I warned, but as soon as I’d sounded out the ‘c,’ he was on the porch post-vampire super speed, hamming it up with my Gran.

“Mrs. Stackhouse, it is a pleasure,” he said with mischievous goodwill.  Somehow, despite his ageless face, Eric was managing to come across as a bawdy-yet-harmless old coot.  When he took her hand gallantly and pressed his charming leer to her age-spotted knuckles, my onetime regal Gran giggled like a kindergartner on a sugar high.  I stared at the both of them and tried to figure where my once predictable life had fled to.

Maybe I could follow it there and we could woefully reminisce over gin and tonics.

“Well, now, really…” she gushed, patting away at her gray coif.

Maybe Eric’s kisses were laced with something.

 “And might I say, my dear lady, you have done a marvelous job raising Sookie.  I will be proud to call her mine.”

My eyes narrowed at his sneaky phrasing, but my surely intoxicated Gran let it slip right over her head.

“Oh, well, now, she’s really such a good girl, she practically raised herself.”

“I’m sure that’s just not true.”

“Well, maybe not entirely…” she preened.

I was seriously considering tossing my daisies right at Eric’s craftily courteous face.  I played softball for years, after all, and I’ve got a wicked pitch…

“Come on now, Sookie!” hollered my Gran as I was struggling to remember what manners were.  “I’ll sit with Mr. Northman while you settle your flowers and get changed up!”

 “Oh, Eric, please.”

“Then it’s Adele to you, Eric.  After all, we’re near family now, what with your progeny changing Hadley and all.”

“Why, have you been reading up on us, Adele?  So many humans don’t think to bother…”

Maybe just the vase.  If I moved a half a foot to the right, and if Gran took just two steps back from the deliciously devious Viking…

“Sookie!” Gran hollered again as she turned to head inside.  Quick as a blink, Eric had the door open and was gently lifting her over the threshold.

Okay, so maybe I’d spare the Baccarat, after all.

Still, I was muttering as I followed them up, trying to make out the freshly swept steps over my mad daisy meadow, surely sounding like the crazy Sookie everyone whispered I was.  I came in the kitchen just as my body-snatched Gran was nuking the treacherous Eric Northman a bottle of True Blood.

“Oh, look at those,” she flustered when I came in proceeded by the armload of daisies.  “Those are just lovely, Eric.”

“I am glad you both like them.”  He fixed me with suddenly intense eyes.  “As they are only the beginning.”

Gran clucked cheerfully at that, and Eric flashed back to cheeky charm.  My baffled gaze bounced between them.  What was I supposed to think of any of this?

“Well go on and get changed, Sookie,” Gran shooed.  “We don’t want to keep Eric waiting all night.”

“For you dear ladies, I certainly would wait all night,” he lilted, giving me a trickster’s wink.  Gran laughed girlishly at that, and he grinned until I could practically see his molars.

I had to grit my own on my way out of the room.

In my bedroom, I was careful enough putting the flowers on my dresser for the, uh, vase’s sake, but I slammed around getting changed.

So Eric Northman thought he was sooooooo special, did he?  What with cooing girls all over him like lusty lambs to slaughter, and reducing ordinarily reasonable Grans into schoolgirl hysterics, and pumping perfectly sculpted buttocks up and down, up and down, up- and do NOT go there Sookie!

I gripped the edge of my dresser, because, let’s face it: I needed to have a grip on something.  When I’d calmed down enough, I pulled it open and yanked out shorts and a t-shirt.  The shorts were well worn, stretchy and gray.  The t-shirt pictured a cat clinging rather desperately to a branch with one paw; it was a blue that matched my eyes, and the script above the cat’s head read “This is just not my day.”  I went into the bathroom and scrubbed my teeth and my face, because after all day at Merlotte’s I felt like a grease bucket.  My hair I left in my work ponytail.

I came back into the kitchen on a sullen flounce.  Eric’s lips twitched when he saw my t-shirt, and Gran gave me a critical eye, but neither of them said anything.  I guess wisdom really does come with age.

“Sookie,” Eric said, saluting me with his half empty True Blood.  He looked pinker already.

“I was just telling Adele about some of my memories of Gladiatorial combat.  The night events, of course.”

 “Of course,” Gran giggled, looking downright giddy.  ‘Cause nothing lightens a friendly visit like stories of desperate men getting mauled by starving beasts to the roar of bloodthirsty crowds.

For the second time that day, my eyes drifted closed in silent prayer.

When I opened them again, Eric was trying desperately not to laugh, and Gran was studying me with concern.

“You alright, Sookie?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m just fine, Gran,” I said, sweet as her pecan pie, and Eric had to turn away and lose himself in his bottle.

“Well then, I hope you young folks’ll excuse me a moment,” Gran said apologetically and entirely towards Eric.

“Not so very young,” he leered back, and she flushed to violet.  Her arthritic hips were downright perky as she left the room.

My jaw dropped, and I turned on Eric as soon as she was out of sight.

“Did you do that glamour thing on my Gran?” I hissed, propping my furious hands on my hips so I wouldn’t take a swing at him.

“No,” he said mildly, leaning back in the kitchen chair as he took a swig of True Blood.

“I normally don’t have to,” he added at my expression of disbelief.

“Well I have never seen in my 25 years seen her act like that!”

“Even so…”  He waved a showcase hand over his admittedly spectacular form.

“This is all Eric, darlin’,” he drawled.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, and his blue eyes darkened to nighttime skies. “What I want from you definitely is not kid friendly-“

I snorted at that.

“-but aside from that… I find that I am rather fond of your Gran,” he said, entirely serious now.  “She is curious about my kind, and… she actually thanked me for saving Hadley.  ‘You lifted her from a world of greater darkness,’ she said.”  He seemed rather bewildered by that.

“I would not disrespect such a woman as that, and certainly not in her own home.”

I searched his grave face for any sign of falsehood, but if that was a lie, it was surely the best one I’d ever heard.  My temper collapsed into a vague sense of embarrassment.  Maybe I wasn’t the only one Eric made senseless.

“Alrighty then,” I consented with a brisk nod that sent my ponytail flying all around my head.

Gran slipped back into the room not a moment after, and Eric positively beamed at her.

“You want some more blood there, Eric?” Gran warmly offered.

“I’m just fine, Adele, thank you,” Eric kindly replied.

He finished his blood with a practiced gulp, then walked to the sink to rinse the bottle.  He patted Gran on the shoulder as he passed into our laundry room to put it in recycling, as if we did this every night of our lives.

Well this was surely the strangest night of my life.

“Now, Sookie, as to our business…” he said as he stretched back out in his chair.  When he turned to me, it was with a clinical expression.  Just like that he had switched on the Wall Street juice.

“Your cell phone is on order with Fed-Ex.  It should arrive sometime tomorrow morning.  There is a list of numbers inside this packet, including mine, Pam’s and Hadley’s, along with your first year contract and necessary employee forms.”

Eric had set the paperwork on the table while I was changing, and he placed a palm on it now.  It was one of those oversized off-yellow envelopes, and Eric’s big hand practically swallowed it up.  I had a lusty moment where I wondered if he’d been blessed with a matching set.

For the third time that day, I closed my eyes in a silent prayer for strength.

When I opened them, Eric was watching me carefully.

“You are tired,” he observed.

“Not so much now,” I admitted, surprised to find it was true.  “And I’ve got a late shift tomorrow, so I can sleep in.”

“Regardless, these matters can wait until your mind is more rested.  But if you grab a sweater, we can go for a ride,” he suggested, turning the full watt influence of his big blue eyes on me.  I glanced out the window at his topless Corvette, then back to his willfully hopeful face.

“You go on, Sookie,” my Gran conspired from the sink, and I perked up.  So she wasn’t entirely deaf, then…

“Alright,” I said with only partial reluctance.  Like it would be a hardship to ride in the moonlight with a gorgeous vamp.  The other more complicated stuff…  I took in Eric’s fallen angel face, and squared my shoulders.  I was a big girl, wasn’t I?

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Sook.

“I’ll be right back.”

I hurried up and grabbed a sweater jacket that was hanging off a hook on my bedroom door.  I took a moment to spray on a splash of the perfume I’d worn the first night Eric and I had met.  Obsession, the bottle read.  More’n likely the other way around, I thought with a sniff, before heading back down.

When I reentered the kitchen, it was to the strange sight of Eric and my Gran facing off like they were about to take steps at a square dance.

“Adele,” Eric graveled, folding his tall self over in a roguish bow.

“Eric,” she lilted back, pulling out her apron and giving him a saucy half curtsey.

“Until next time, then, fair lady,” he said with a wistful edge.  Then, to my utter shock, he leaned down and gave her forehead a tender kiss.  And Adele Stackhouse, practical Gran extraordinaire, melted against the stove and batted her antique eyelashes right up at the big ol’ ancient Viking.

Maybe if I bashed my head on his Corvette hard enough, this night would start to make sense.

Eric grabbed my stunned elbow on the way out, and I rubber necked all the way out the door trying to keep an eye on her scarlet face.

“That really just happened,” I managed when the night air hit my face.

“It did,” Eric agreed pleasantly.

“You’re like…  You’re like…” I sputtered.  Even my Word of the Day calendar didn’t have an adjective that fit.

“I’m like…?” he prodded as he led me down off the porch.

“Like catnip for women!”

He considered this a moment, lighting up when the analogy hit.

“Why yes!  That is accurate enough, I suppose.”  Suppose nothing.  He was practically peacocking at the thought.

“You’re gonna give my Gran a heart attack,” I muttered.

“Nonsense,” he scoffed.  “If her heartbeat had gone the least bit irregular under my attentions, I would have heard it.  Just because Adele is older does not mean she has ceased to be a woman.”

So not going there.

“Okay then,” I said rather weakly.  “A ride you say?”

His long arms wrapped around my waist at that, pulling me tight to his torso.  It was an odd position, not loose enough for kissing, but definitely more than a little intimate.

“Whaf if thif?” I muffled suspiciously into his shirt.

“This, my dear Ms. Stackhouse, is magick,” he said as I struggled not to inhale the wonderfully scented fabric of his shirt.  Magick or not, I needed to breath.  Air.  I yanked my face back enough to glare at his Adam’s apple.

“Uh huh.  You just remember my Gran could be watching,” I hedged.  Gran was in the house somewhere, but I knew she was too polite to watch us.  Besides the manners of the issue, she was pleased as punch she had another male besides Jason to dote on.  And to dote on her.

I sighed loudly.

“You must wrap your arms around me,” he said in such a factual voice that I stupidly complied.

It took a few seconds to realize we were no longer on the ground.  When I did, my grip shifted from petulant to possessed.

“I thought you said we were going for a ride!”  Was I shrieking?  Surely I wasn’t shrieking.

The wind was beginning to blow by more and more briskly.  It reminded me of riding a rollercoaster at the fair, except the air flow was constant rather than stop and go.  I took a quick peek at the ground and discovered trees flashing by at what was surely an illegal rate.  Could vampires get tickets for speeding, I wondered?

               “We are on a ride, or perhaps I should say you are riding me.”  I was beginning to regret my horse analogy rather desperately.

               “I took that to mean we’d be riding in your car.”

               “Why would you think that?”

               “’Cause that’s what ordinary dates do!  Take drives, neck at the movies.  You know, ordinary stuff!”

“Sookie,” he said gently into the shell of my ear.  “Neither one of us is ordinary.”

“Don’t I just know it,” I muttered as his long arms wrapped tighter around my waist.

“I mean only to show you the wondrous side of our world,” he said a few minutes later, in an almost apologetic tone.  Almost.

Still, what could I even say to that?  I reluctantly relaxed into his steel and supple embrace.

“But as to the necking…”

His cool lips pressed a hot promise to my jugular, and I made a sound not unlike a mouse in a trap.  He laughed, and as I swatted at him I felt the ground become solid beneath my feet.  I looked up from his chest in surprise.

“It was your first time.  I didn’t want to take you too far.”  My suspicious eyes snapped to his face, but he looked deadly serious.

Why was it that Eric Northman could make the most harmless phrase sound perverse, but the dirtiest of phrases sound sincere?  Was this some sort of special vamp power, or had he brought it over from his human days?  Wasn’t he just the strangest of puzzles?  And now, as I studied his earnest expression, I realized he was one I couldn’t walk away from without solving.

I sighed and turned my head to look around at our surroundings.  It took me a moment to recognize the landscape, as I’d never seen it under moonlight before.  I’d been here a handful of times, as it was one of Jason’s old fishing haunts.  Normally it was a wild enough spot to require daylight visits, but I guess gators and cats weren’t really a problem given my current company.

We were standing on a sturdy bit of old dock, situated in a bayou about five miles from my house.  The listing trees dripped ethereal fingers of Spanish moss, the sluggish nighttime waters were a greenish black lightened by the occasional glint of an ambitious reptile.  The thick air smelled like salt-rolled dead things, not so much in denial of the inevitable, but more as an effort to maintain their wildness until the very end.  Above it all, the fat moon glowed like a mysterious sun, casting stark shadows over the surreal landscape.

I glanced from this dark fairytale to a blissfully faced Eric, and suddenly understood that he was doing his best to build a bridge for me.  A beautiful bridge.  How many times had I bothered to search out such scenes without Jason dragging my reluctant self along?  Never, I realized.  Engrossed in the light of day, I’d missed this whole magick world.  Our world, now, I ruefully acknowledged.

“The air smells wild here,” Eric said, sighing wistfully as he mimicked my earlier thought.  “It is such a rare thing, in these modern days.  It strangely reminds of my human days by the North Sea.  It is one of the reasons I came to settle here.”

He turned to gaze at me with those riptide eyes of his.

“Standing here in the moonlight, you look like I plucked off your wings and stole you away to a land of nightmares.”  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything at all.

He came closer, and I tilted my wary head to look up at him.  We were on dangerous ground here.

“It’s just wonderful, Eric,” I said softly.  “Even better than the daisies.”  He gave a wry smile.

“The flowers were easy enough.  But you… you are not an easy woman, Miss Stackhouse.”

I smiled nervously at that.  Once again, Eric sounded like he was saying something entirely more serious than what the phrase should have implied.

“Well, you chose well.  It was definitely worth the crazy flight.”  His wide blue eyes crinkled happily, his full lips quirked at the edges.

“So surprised, Miss Stackhouse,” he teased, and I flushed.

“Well, no…  Okay, maybe a little.  How’d you find this place?”

“Oh, I’ve flown around this area a bit,” he said, sounding as innocent as a choirboy.  Right.

My eyes narrowed on a stray thought.

“Hey, were you at my bedroom window early this morning?”  There was a momentary pause.

“Eric…”

“Only to be certain that you arrived home safely.  It was only for a moment,” he added at my incredulous expression.

“Well, that’s just…”  Creepy?  Thoughtful?  Heck-if-I-Know?

“Just don’t do it anymore, ‘kay?”

He stayed silent.

“Eric!” I scolded.  “Answer me!”

“I am trying to decide whether or not to lie to you.  I am finding it harder than it should be, especially considering that it will be mostly for your own good.”

He peered down at me, intensely curious.

“What do you think this means, Sookie Stackhouse?”

“Um…  You’re growing as a person?” I said with my nerviest of smiles, and he threw his beautiful head back and laughed and laughed and laughed under the moon.  His skin glowed furiously, brighter than any candle we could have lit, and I felt drawn to him like a self aware moth.

When he finally stopped he fixed on me with that dangerous, boyish good cheer.

“I needed this,” he said, looking surprised at the statement.  He took a moment to consider it, then nodded.

“I needed to be here tonight, surrounded by what remains of lighter times,” he said, cupping the side of my face with his big hand.  I sank into the touch, into the raw blue of his eyes.

“I needed to share it with you,” he finished simply, and I melted into Sookie pudding.

“Eric,” I whispered, lifting on my toes to offer us both a taste.

This was nothing like our first kiss.  This was whispers and silk, this was the softness of familiar passion.  He murmured something unidentifiable against my mouth, slid a patient tongue from the corner of my lips inward.  I opened on a sigh, because how could I not?  Eric needed me in this moment.  The thousand year old killer needed little ol’ Sookie Stackhouse for a taste of the light, and I needed him to show me what sharing feels like.

We needed each other.

We drifted together to a soundtrack of bayou nighttime, until finally Eric pulled back and stared down at me with glittering blue eyes.  His fangs were noticeably absent, and I wondered at that.

“You are a dangerous woman, Miss Stackhouse,” he said, repeating his words from the night before.  This time, at least, it didn’t sound as much like an accusation.

“I’m sure you’re off about that, Mr. Northman,” I said, sounding more than a little daft.  My, he sure was handsome!

“No,” he said firmly, eyes flitting down to my tender mouth.  “You are definitely dangerous.”

Okay, so on to easier ground.  I did a little spin, tugged his hands around my waist.

“So, um, how come I felt so light when we were flying?  Like there was no gravity ‘round us?”

“I’ve considered it often enough over the years.  I believe it has to do with my energy, that it creates an enveloping field as I fly about.  So what I hold, it is light as I am.  Not all of our kind can do it,” he added smugly.

“So theoretically we could…  you know.”

“No,” he said wistfully.  “I tried that when I was three hundred and nearly dropped my lover into the Baltic Sea.”

I had to stare out at the bayou for a few moments while I processed this.

“I guess after a thousand years I’d be hard pressed to find anything you haven’t tried,” I said eventually, sounding sullen even to myself.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “But after a thousand years, as you say, I have also learned that sex is but a constant accomplice in the pursuit of true pleasure.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying sex doesn’t really matter?” I scoffed.

“No,” he said with a grin.  “Sex definitely matters, as you’ll soon enough learn.”

“Eric…”

“But sex alone is like dining on water.  While it may fill you up, you get nothing of substance from it.”

“Uh huh,” I murmured.  “So what substances of mine are you so drawn to?  You know, besides the blood?”

“Your devoted nature,” he said immediately.  “Your wary curiosity.  Your practical compassion.  Your scent.”  He shoved his head into the crease of my neck and shoulder and sucked up air like he’d been starved for it.

“Do you recycle pickup lines, too?” I said rather snottily.  I regretted it instantly.

“That was a nasty insult to us both, Sookie,” Eric said, pulling back from me with an expression of almost paternal disappointment.

I think I’d have preferred a snarl.

“Yeah, I know.  I’m sorry.  You just….”  Swallow your pride, Stackhouse.  “Well you unnerve me, alright?”

That confession seemed to have been penance enough.  Eric leaned in on that fractional distance he seemed to love so much, the tease-but-don’t-touch that was about to drive me mad.

“I’d rather undress you.”  I swatted at him.

“Just ‘cause I kiss you doesn’t mean you’ve got permission to ruin it with a mouthful of dirt.”  Eric laughed like the madman I was beginning to believe he was.

“Oh, my Sookie,” he said with red rimmed eyes, when he’d found his tongue again.  “I do believe I’m mad about you.”

“Obviously mad, you mean,” I said with a cheerful sniff.

“And since it is currently only a one way affliction…  Why, I must simply pay-it-forward…  Is that not what you humans say?”

“Yes, but Eric…” I protested weakly as his lips closed the distance with slow motion passion.

“All you need do is command me to stop…” he breathed along my lower lip.

Alrighty then.

I grabbed his face and yanked him towards me, and he came laughing into the kiss.  I was surely as wild as his memories, standing on that dock, and he matched it all with good humored passion.  He let me take the reigns, he let me sink us deeper, he let me drag us into madness.  As my fingers raked at his loose hair, his other hand came up and anchored me by my ponytail.  As my hips ground rhythmically against his, he picked up the beat and ground right back.  And when my teeth sank into his bottom lip, when I felt his fangs explode like soda tabs on shook up pop, he jerked back just enough not to pierce me.  This was my walk on the dark side, after all.

I’m not sure when we lost control, but sure enough we both did.  When his big hands hit the snaps on my bra, I realized I was clinging to him for every moment of denied happiness I’d ever felt, and he was eating his way down my throat like, well, a vampire.  And unless I planned on experiencing a double dose of bloody firsts in a swamp, I needed to end this quick.

“Eric,” I breathed.

There was no response.

“Eric, Eric!  You have to stop now.”

He growled his denial into my neck and I pressed a trembling hand to his cool face.  He yanked back as I applied gentle pressure, glaring down at me with murderous frustration.

I wondered that even now I felt no fear in his presence.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m hungry for you, too,” I said gently, and he twitched.  “I’m hungry for you in ways I never thought I could be.”  He twitched even harder at that.

Maybe I just shouldn’t talk.

I studied his glowing, savagely handsome face in the moonlight.  His blue eyes were dangerous slits, and his lips were pulled so tightly closed over his mouth I could see the outline of his fangs through his skin.  Control, I realized.  He was fighting for it as passionately as I’d ever seen anyone fight for anything, and I realized he was fighting for my safety, as well.  No one knew we were here, and it would be easy enough to glamour Gran if I ended up dead.  Strangely enough, that thought made me feel warmer towards him.  I took a deep breath and reopened my mouth.

“Okay, Eric, look…  If we’re gonna be hungry for each other like this, that’s it.  I’m not gonna do halfways.”

“But you are saying yes?”  At that moment he looked about as desperate as a thousand year old killer possibly can.  “You are saying you will be my…  lover?”
“I’m saying it seems we’re headed that way.”  He leaned in to me and I slapped a hand to his stone chest.  “If you can prove you’re serious ‘bout all this.”

“I am as serious as the True Death about you, Sookie Stackhouse.”  His blue eyes were jewels of devotion, his pale skin pulsed with his intended commitment.  Oh Lordy.

“Jeez,” I muttered.  “Don’t go making it sound all ominous.  I’m just asking for a little time, a little proof.”

“Proof?”  He scowled at that and pulled back to a stranger’s distance.

I stared at his hunched shoulders, bewildered and frustrated.  Did he not understand this was my one-time gift we were discussing here?  Not to mention my miracle for even being able to discuss it in the presence of other, rarer gifts?

“Well, you can hardly expect me to just jump in the hay with you after less than a week!  I mean come on, Eric!  You’ve got a thousand years on me!  What have I got that’ll compete with that?”

“More than you know, foolish girl.”  His voice was hard with derision.

Nope.  Not having it.  I jabbed him in the chest hard enough to injure my index finger.  I pulled it back to my chest and nursed it along with my glare.  He glared right back.

“See!  That right there!  ‘Foolish girl,’” I mocked.  “What in the world am I supposed to do with you when you say stuff like that?”  He grinned hideously, and I was, uh, relieved to see his fangs were put away.

“Oh, I could think of a thing or two to haunt your lily white dreams.”

“You’re not scary,” I sassed, suffocating an urge to check my lower parts on the lie.  I mean, do pants really catch on fire?  Do noses really grow?  I had to wonder.  After all, this was a crazy world I was getting into.

“Oh, believe me, Ms. Stackhouse.  This is my lightest of hands.”

“Well, I’m not ready for any of your hands yet,” I mouthed back, wondering at my audacity.  Where was this coming from?  Who was this verbally liberated creature?  Surely not Sookie Stackhouse, virgin telepathic barmaid.

We stared at each other for the darkest of moments, and then something very strange happened:  I got a taste of Eric’s thoughts.

He was thinking I was a rare creature, and that a thousand years didn’t do a thing to lessen the sweetness of a bouquet’s notes.  He was thinking I was going to frustrate the nightlife out of him before we were through.  He was thinking the only other time he felt so alive was when he was killing.

He was thinking I might be worth everything.

He was thinking I might not.

I emerged from this bout of lethal knowledge to find Eric and I still eye locked.  He was staring at me like he was about to ask where I’d gone on vacation, and my lips jerked up in my default, kooky smile.  Usually it works like a charm, but it was totally out of place for the moment.

Crap.

“Let’s not fight, alrighty?” I deflected sweetly, drawing on every bit of Southern Charm in my arsenal. “It’s so pretty out here, and we might as well enjoy it.”  Eric looked anything but convinced.

But he looked away first.

Well, I thought, inhaling the marshy scents of bayou as I tried to process.  Well well well…  So Eric was a killer.  I’d already known that.  One of my favorite co-workers, Terry Bellefluer, was a killer, too, and he sure hadn’t come out of Vietnam as rational minded as Eric.  Sometimes life called for death, and Lord knew Eric had lived long enough to see it necessary.  As for the rest of it…

Wasn’t I sitting here thinking thoughts just the same?  Wasn’t I wondering if he was worth all the risks he presented?  I could hardly be mad at him for his thoughts, after all.  And I could hardly admit that I’d heard them.  I thought back to his monstrous face in his car the night we’d met, how scary he’d gotten when he’d thought I could do just that.  Nope, Eric Northman wouldn’t be learning that from me any time ever.

So we sat there together awhile, thinking our taboo thoughts as we stared out at the life and death of the bayou.  As we followed the curving swoop of a patient hawk as it hunted for foolish prey.  As a pebble-skinned gator snapped hungrily through the murky depths.  As an angry squirrel chattered its way through the listing tree tops.

As my moonlit vampire considered the consequences of losing it over a stubborn telepathic girl.

“Time for bed, then, little girl,” he drawled finally, and it was all I could do not to slap his sullen, fallen angel face.

While I was considering this appalling bit of violence, he snatched me up in his arms quick as you please and shoved my face into the curve of his arm.  The sky whirred by faster coming than going, but really I couldn’t tell you on sight.  All I got visually on the trip back was the under crease of Eric’s delicious smelling armpit.

You are one strange girl, Sookie Stackhouse.

Still, I couldn’t work up any real anger for the treatment.  Because… despite the fact that I knew he was still pissed, despite the fact he’d moved us with inhuman speeds to dump me off for the evening, despite the fact we’d had a verbal smack down, one thing was obvious: there was gentleness in Eric’s touch.

And when his hand brushed tenderly over the crown of my head mid-flight, I thought that if he were to ask, I might just be ready for his hands, after all.