Something about her legs made it hard for him to breathe. He need not breathe regardless, it was true, and yet a tremor in the red matter of his undead being was evoked, or perhaps invoked, every damn time she walked into his sight. The line of her legs was a promise of tension, twisting and torsion, of the soft pull of skin on skin. The knot of her knees contained more sensuality than had every one of the moments in which every girl he'd ever fucked fell apart into a moaning, quivering mess around him. Her arch of her ankles entranced him as they paced towards him, and as he felt the pull of each muscle in the litheness of her gait.

'Sookie. What a surprise.' It wasn't, of course. He had felt the decreasing distance between them deep in his primal cortex, in the same way he felt subliminally the setting of the sun in bloody hues.

'I did suspect you sat in that throne all the time, even when the bar's not open. Always good to have stuff confirmed. Your ego is inspiring, Eric.' Her eyes were dusty gauntlets, challenging him, measuring him, carefully resisting him.

'To what do I owe the pleasure?' he grinned ferally as he mangled his words with a barely discernable Nordic contortion of pitch and assonance. Sookie settled into the bite of it.

'No reason. I mean, can't a girl want a drink?'

'I seem to recall a delightful, parochial and family-friendly establishment in the charming shithole you call Bon Temps.'

'Everything at Merlotte's was broken again in the latest series of extraordinary supernatural catastrophes. For a change.' She folded down into the nearest chair. The stripper pole cast a black shadow across her profile, and he could see her exhaustion in the slump of her shoulders.

'And I'm sure you've noticed Fangtasia has yet to open. For another couple hours.'

'Suppose I wasn't paying attention to the time.' Her eyes flickered to the tapping of his long fingers on the arm of his throne.

'Better off supposing I wasn't a thousand year old vampire bored by your prattle. Or perhaps the fangbanging is affecting your IQ? I heard something about that on the TV just the other day. Humans – so insightful.'

'Eric Northman, you are an ass.' Her tone lacked any of her usual indignance. He almost missed the self-righteous spark of insult in her eyes, and how easy she could be to rile.

'I do wish I could say I hadn't heard that one before. But don't worry, Sookie, it's less that you're singularly uninventive when it comes to cussing, and more that I am – how to put it – a scoundrel.'

He winked, ran a hand through his hair, and then leant back, closing his eyes. To all appearances, it looked as though he had forgotten he was not alone. He returned to his thoughts, carefully rejecting the beat of the extraordinary heart before him to muse on her hypothetically and less dangerously. Sookie's self-delusion amused him endlessly. The combination of her coquettish innocence with the frank sex of her body and her scent and the lines and planes and curves of her – she must have to fight her nature every second, restrain herself, soften herself, her whole life a long pause, a painful exercise in repression, he thought. It wound a tight coil under his navel that pulsed like an aneurysm. His jaws ached with the weight of his teeth.

'Did I mention wanting a drink?' Even with his eyes closed, Eric could see the arch of her eyebrow.

'Did I ever mention being a bartender?'

'Well then, I guess I'll help myself.'

He listened to the soft patter of her feet as she ducked under the bar, and the splash of liquor in a scratched shot glass. His blood sang quietly inside him whenever she moved nearer, because it knew her insides so intimately. It had traced the delicate filigrees of her circulation, from fingertips to lungs to cunt to jugular, and had swollen and raced and figuratively frozen along with hers. How absurd, to be jealous of what was, in essence, himself. She swallowed, and the knot below his navel hardened painfully, and then the pour of – of whisky, he smelt, rang out again.

'Eric,' Sookie paused, as though gathering her strength, 'can I ask you a question?'

'You have.'

She muttered something angry and unintelligible, paced back to her seat in the stark shadows, and started again. 'Why do vampires have to claim ownership of things?'

Eric pulled up slowly, mind racing down various avenues of possibility and potential. He weighed his words carefully. 'There is no "have to".'

'Seems to me there is. You do it with people all the time.'

'People are food. Even humans don't like to share their food.' He grinned widely, and his teeth ached more insistently.

'Humans also don't like to be owned.' Her lips were a pornographic moue of discontent that he could only watch with hardly veiled hunger.

'That's a lie if there ever was one. Humans die without ownership – your entire identities are constructed around being owned by your dynasties or your friends or your sports teams or your church. The whole idea of belonging or allegiance is just a desperate and pathetic attempt to rebrand the susceptibility of humans to servitude. And don't give me some shit about the abolition of slavery. We're in Louisiana, remember.'

'I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do not want to be owned, by anyone, ever, in any way. So,' she smiled triumphantly, 'fuck you, Eric, and your crude analysis of an entire species.'

'You could have just said that you needed relationship advice,' he replied knowingly.

'I beg your pardon.'

'Clearly you're angry with Bill Compton for being possessive. You are exceedingly easy to read, and that was before you so kindly drank my blood. What I don't understand is why you thought a Viking would be any more enlightened with regards to the female sex.'

'Maybe it's because you're the only acquaintance of mine with large quantities of accessible liquor.' He watched her tilt her shot glass dismissively on the table and the way the dregs of golden whiskey caught the dim light.

'Or maybe it's because I'm the only person you know who recognises you to be one of the most powerful and singularly dangerous people to walk this earth: who sees clearly your unscrupulous pragmatism, your relativistic moral code, your frighteningly puritanical, yet somehow selfish, principles, your carefully checked sexuality, and the raw force of your bloodline, as well as your superficial charm, intoxicating blood and your,' he smirked, eyes wandering, 'nice rack.'

Her eyes flashed. 'Perhaps it's because I'm curious.' Her tone was terrifyingly callous.

'What do you mean?'

Sookie spoke deliberately, precisely. 'Maybe I enjoy watching you carefully reveal how well you understand the intricacies of me in the absolutely desperate hope that I fall, spineless and trembling, at your feet. Unfortunately, having someone else tell me that I'm a selfish bitch – something I know already – doesn't get me all hot. Eric, I've had enough of being had, and used, and manipulated. If you knew me so well, you might have realised that.'

The air was leaden and unmoving. Eric's fingers stopped absently tracing the upholstery of his throne, stilling like cold, white spiders preparing to pounce. Sookie stood.

'You knew I was healing when you decided to suck the silver out of me, didn't you.' It wasn't a question; instead a keen edged statement that sunk between them.

'Yes.' She turned to go at the unnecessary confirmation.

'That wasn't surrender or submission, Sookie. I think you realise that.' His gaze caught hers, steely, unblinking. 'Except in the sense that consent is surrendering to your own desires. You wanted to heal, to share, to feel, to rebel against Bill too, probably. You are your own and only master in all of this. But you don't need me to tell you that like a wise kung-fu master in a bad Hollywood remake.'

'Dare I ask about the martial arts reference?'

'Ask Pam someday.'

'I'm sure she'd love that.'

The resonance of their bodies – the harmonic sympathy, he thought, and smiled wryly – had been honed night after night in their lurid, humid dreams of arching and stifled moaning. He could feel the changing pace of her hummingbird heartbeat. She stood so still, under the shadow of the ridiculous pole, under the heat of his gaze. He ran his hand through his hair again.

'Fuck, Sookie,' he muttered, rough and unhinged by the pounding of pulse in his temples, wrists and groin.

'Come here, Eric.'

He stood before her in the blurred shimmer of motion that was the dark irony of rigor mortis death, shoulders and torso curved around the area she inhabited. She didn't blink. Pushing up onto the balls of her feet, she pushed away the negative space between them, and he folded around her, pulling the tight knit of her back and muscles and ribcage into himself, hard against the tautness of him.

Their kiss was like the inevitable culmination of lifetimes of self-obliterating longing. It was hard and sharp and bruising – the collision of stars. They were nothing but viscera panting to be united. There was no surrender or soft curves – only triumph. Eric's fangs snapped out, and Sookie felt the euphoria of his release and trembled in anticipation. She could feel his hands everywhere, fingers hard against her shoulder blades and the angle of her waist. Stepping back, she tugged her dress off over her head. Eric's eyes raked her body.

'Your hair's loose,' he murmured, twisting a lock around his fingers. Sookie frowned in reply, tugging at his shirt. He shed it in an instant, stepping into her again, kissing her frantically, hands charged against her bare skin. She felt aflame, alight.

'Too goddamn tall,' she muttered against his mouth. He had her pressed against the bar in a second, and wrapped her legs around his hips. Her body stuttered into his, overwhelmed by sensation, by the heady pound and pulse of the moment. She pulled at his belt buckle and felt a smile quirk his lips pressed against her clavicle.

'Please! Watching my Maker and my least favourite half-breed dry hump against my bar like horny pre-teens after half a cider has never been high on my list of priorities. We open in five.' Pam swept out, leaving Sookie and Eric sprawled and twined.