1
The vibration of my cell phone in the pocket of my Bermuda shorts in startled me, and Marci because she had been pushed against me at the stall thanks to the thick traffic the bazaar had brought out. In addition, it was post Mardi Gras week, so there was lots of extra traffic in the narrow side street now that the tourists didn't have the parade attractions to occupy them, and their bellies had soured on the excess drinking in which they had partaken during the springtime melee.
"Is that him? Is he finally here?" she asked, redirecting Patricia's attention from the horrendous scarves she was contemplating purchasing. Both she and Marci were anxious to meet my boyfriend. They had yet to meet him even though we had been together nearly three years; they were definitely going to be flabbergasted when they met him, which is why I had held off on the introductions until now. We were moving in together, which I had yet to announce, and since Marci and Patricia were my best friends, they deserved to know. Besides, we had the kind of friendship where we often just dropped by each other's homes on a whim; coming across Eric there might cause my friends a heart attack.
"I haven't answered it yet, so how would I know?" Marci rolled her eyes at my teasing grin. Marci had always been easily excitable.
"I can smell you." Eric's familiar, sensual tone filled my ear after I said 'hello.' Immediately, I felt the all too intense downstairs tickle kick into gear. That was his intention, clearly. "Hmm. I can really smell you now."
"Very clever. Where are you?" Keeping my voice at a respectable octave was proving to be very, very difficult.
"Here I am." His voice was in my other ear, and his hand slipped around my side to rub over my bellybutton, only to disappear so decorum was maintained in the busy public street. "Godkväll, kär."
I caught a glimpse Marci's jaw falling to the ground and Patricia's face loosing all the blood beneath her skin, causing her naturally medium toned skin to pale dramatically when I turned to let Eric kiss me in greeting. I hoped that they would get themselves together quickly and not let their shock embarrass them.
I also hoped that they were as tolerant as I thought them to be.
Unfortunately, they hadn't composed themselves when Eric had taken his lips off mine and turned his attention to my companions. Marci's mouth was still gaping and Patricia looked like she was on the verge of fainting.
"Hello, I am Eric." My boyfriend was as nonchalant about my friend's manner-less behavior as they were surprised about his race. He answered the question hanging in the air that neither of my friends could allow past their lips. "Yes, I am a vampire."
Marci managed to close her mouth and shake her short stupor off to introduce herself. She made the awkward gesture of offering her hand to Eric; vampires do not shake hands. After a quick brush off by myself of the manners misstep, Patricia swayed visibly.
"Please, do not faint." Eric said, his icy blue eyes shining from the lights of the streetlamps. I understood that Eric did not mean any rudeness by his statement, since I knew him so well, but Patricia did not. Her perception of his statement as impolite brought a little blood back to her face, steadying her enough for her to reply.
"I shall faint if I see fit." She retorted, not meeting Eric's eyes. It wasn't his height that caused her to neglect eye contact, but the misguided belief that a vampire would glamour a person at first sight. "I would be well within my right to, since I only just found out with no forewarning that one of my best friends has been dating a vampire for the past few years!"
"Patricia, it's not that big of a deal." Marci said, being as gentle as possible as she tried to let Patricia know that her attitude was inappropriate.
"I disagree, Marci. It is that big of a deal, since I don't think it's okay that my friend is being used as a living, breathing meal."
"That's unfair." I said. Patricia's words were hurtful; her assumptions were also incorrect, which made the words sting that much more.
"It's also a private matter between myself and Lotus." Eric added, his tone frigid. Patricia cut her eyes up at Eric, who, at six foot four, towered over Patricia's five foot two. She did not try to avoid eye contact with him, since she was so angry that she forgot to not meet his eyes. Patricia looked ready to leap at Eric at any second if she felt the need. "However, in the interest of making peace with each other for the sake of your friendship with Lotus, I would be willing to answer whatever questions to which you desire an answer."
"Fine." Patricia agreed. She crossed her arms across her chest and opened her mouth to ask a question.
"Let's move this away from the street faire, please." I interrupted, taking Eric and Patricia both by the elbows and steering them toward the little French coffee and tea shop a few blocks down the street.
Marci took my place beside Patricia as we walked in an attempt to diffuse the tension between my boyfriend and my friend. I gave her a look that conveyed my thanks and she winked at me in the coy way she had. She had no problem with my boyfriend being a vampire.
We sat outside the shop on the cute, Parisian-style patio although the wrought iron tables still were hot from baking in the blistering Southern sun all day. As he often did, Eric crossed his long arms on the table. His cold flesh steamed when it came in contact with the hot metal. Both Marci and I could not stop ourselves from laughing at the sight and sound of the condensation rising from under Eric's arms. He couldn't resist a smirk, either.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw that smirk. In our most intimate of encounters, he often wore that smirk, and it just as often could make me melt without him intending it to do so. He looked over at me from where he sat beside me, directing that alluring semi-smile at me, able to hear the beating of my heart increase. Teasing me, he said upon more than one occasion, was a favorite pastime of his.
We discussed the menu as we waited for the waitress, but avoided the subject of what he had come to discuss. When the waitress arrived, we discovered that we had a problem; she was a Creole, who only spoke French, which wasn't uncommon in New Orleans. Marci and Patricia exchanged worried glances. The three of us had only taken Spanish classes in college as it was more prevalent in our area of the state.
"Nous serions comme deux lattes, un sans fouet, un chai latte de thé, également sans fouet, et un chocolat Royalty, s'il vous plait."
I had expected Eric to save the day, but Patricia and Marci had not. Marci nodded her approval and thanked him for his assistance, while Patricia squeaked a perfectly polite and perfectly cold 'thank you' as well.
The waitress hid her surprise after an initial facial expression change when she heard Eric order the chocolate Royalty; she had not recognized him for what he was as my two friends immediately had, but she clearly welcomed his entrance to her life. I didn't know what she was saying to him, since I did not speak French, but I could without doubt see and hear that she was coming on to him. The lengthening of her neck was a dead giveaway, even to Patricia. Even though she was conflicted about the identity of my lover, she did not approve of another woman unabashedly propositioning him in front of me. As she sat up as straight as she could, Eric raised his hand casually to her.
"Don't worry," he told her, without a hint of pride in his face or voice as a typical man would have in a situation like this, since it was a major self-esteem boost. The fact that he did not find the situation amusing won him a few points with Patricia. "I'll handle it." He turned his face back to the waitress and spoke to her with a kind, but firm voice.
"Merci pour votre offre, madame, mais je suis dans une relation. J'aime ma petite amie trop à s'engager dans une n'ya rien que je puisse recevoir de vous avec laquelle elle n'a pas déjà me fournir. J'ai aussi ne pas boire sang humain, et bien que j'apprécie votre offre, je dois refuser. "
The woman hung her head in the unmistakable manner that a woman does when she has been irrefutably turned down, and excused herself. Silence took hold of our group for a long moment.
"Well, whatever you said, I don't think she'll be back." Marci summed up. I grinned to myself, hiding my mouth behind my hand.
"Excuse me." We all turned our attention to the two small, older ladies that were passing by in the street. The one who had spoken looked to be the oldest, her hair as white as snow and curled up precisely against her head. "We just happened to overhear the exchange you had with the young lady, and I wanted to say that you are a sweet young man- well, you can't hardly be young, being what you are. You are probably our senior! Those nuances aside, your belle is certainly very lucky to have you so devoted to her."
I felt a blush creeping up my neck and onto my cheeks while Eric conversed politely with the old ladies who could only be described as tickled pink to be talking to a handsome and gentlemanly vampire. Luckily our drinks arrived via the hands of another waitress- to the delight of the old ladies, who obviously relished a scandal- so I was able to avoid much of the most embarrassing aspects of conversing with the blue hairs.
The waitress placed the drinks at the end of the table on their little tray, next to me, giving me the task of distributing them when she was called away by her superior. I extended the plastic cups to Marci and Patricia who were glad to have their mouths occupied so they didn't have to entertain the old women.
"Ouch!" I cried out, nearly tipping Eric's drink over in the process. The glass bottle was scalding hot; the rejected waitress had heated the bottle in the microwave in hopes that it would cause the vampire that rejected her momentary pain, but instead I had picked it up. Because of her inability to accept being rebuffed all five of my fingers were very badly burnt. I was lucky that I hadn't grabbed the bottle with my full palm or the burn would be much worse.
"Let me see, älskara." Eric took my hand in is, dwarfing mine. The burns alone were enough to bring tears to my eyes but even his light touch made the pain excruciating. "I do not mean to cause you pain. Will you permit me to help you?"
"Please." I wanted the pain to stop. I snuck a glance at my fingertips then wished that I had not. Not having any experience with such things, I wasn't certain, but I wagered that the top few layers of my skin were burned right off.
"Hold still."
Patricia made a noise of protest as Eric ducked his head and brought my fingers up to his mouth discreetly, so that it would not attract attention from the other shop patrons. The old ladies watched intently, more excited than they had been in years to see something so exotic from a most fascinating creature. Marci seemed to be as interested as the old ladies. I had a fleeting image pass through my head of Marci in about fifty years, looking and acting just like the old ladies. Maybe one day I would be her companion. These thoughts were wiped from my mind as Eric's lips pressed against my index fingertip, the usually sensual action sending fiery shots of pain down my nerves. The pain was instantly quelled by the gentle lapping of his tongue against the wound, the magical healing quality of his saliva jump starting the regeneration of the skin of my fingers. Within seconds, my finger was healed.
Just as quickly as he began the action, he was finished. My fingers showed no signs of having been harmed, and the only evidence of what had transpired was the automatic appearance of Eric's fangs.
"Excuse me." He said, retracting his fangs. Doing so at this moment was difficult for him, I knew, because he had surely tasted my blood as he healed me, and his bloodlust typically coupled with bodily lust.
"Thank you." I wiped the tears away from my eyes with one of the generic napkins provided by the shop. Eric leaned over and kissed my forehead in a rather uncharacteristic and loving way, winding his hand around to the back of my head as he did so. The forehead kiss was unexpected, but he head holding was not; he was the type of man that liked to grasp the back of his lover's upper neck in the throes of passionate osculating. I did enjoy this characteristic of his, and to experience it in this much less sexual, but no less intimate way, brought a warmness to my heart that can't fully be described.
"Anything for you, Lotus." With his free hand, Eric motioned over with just a slight gesture of his index and middle finger the manager of the shop, who had had his eyes trained on our table unbeknownst to anyone but Eric.
"How may I help you, monsieur?" the manager, a gangly, thoroughly plain middle aged man said, clearly nervous. He knew what Eric was, and he knew what his employee had done.
"Your employee has injured my partner, sir, and I will not tolerate such grievances."
"I am sure I have no idea what you mean."
"As I am certain that you are lying to me as surely as you are breathing." The tension was so thick that the air might have been gelatin. The patrons of the shop as well as our motley group watched the scene unfold with bated breath and silence. "Pick up the bottle and prove me right." The manager hesitated; he knew that if he picked up the superheated glass bottle he would suffer the same fate as I, but would not have access to the instantaneous healing that I had. "It would be in your best interests if you would pick up that bottle." Eric's voice was as sharp as knives. "I do not tolerate being kept waiting well."
The manager had no choice; he touched the bottle, keeping his fingers on the glass no longer than I, but crying out more fervently.
"Now that you see what your employee has made my lover endure, I trust that the situation will be dealt with in an appropriate manner."
"Indeed, it shall, sir." The manager excused himself, keeping his composure until he had left the public's sight. The collective audience let themselves breathe again, and went back to their business.
"Oh, to have a man like you!" said the old woman, bringing chuckles from those in earshot before heading on their way.
"Shall we begin the interrogation?" Eric's tone was once again light, as if the altercation he had just resolved had never taken place. He reached past me to move the offending hot bottle, steam once again rising from his cold skin. This time it was not funny. Eric did not drink from the bottle the entire time we sat there, I suppose out of respect for me. I wouldn't have minded if he did, but he must have found drinking from the bottle that caused me harm to be repugnant.
"All right." Patricia leaned forward, resting on her elbows. "First things first. It's clear that you are a vampire, but how old are you?"
"1,111 years old." Eric answered quickly and waited for the next question. Patricia was saving the big questions for last.
"Do you love Lotus? Like human love. Can you even feel like a human?"
"I do feel emotions as a human does, often more intensely than when I was human. And, yes, I do love Lotus."
This whole conversation was awkward for me, but I understood that it had to happen for Patricia to accept that Eric was no worse a partner because of his race than if her were human. Marci and I listened, but nursed our drinks so we would not have to contribute.
"Do you drink from Lotus?"
"Yes. I do not drink from her for sustenance; She allows me to take a small amount of blood from her during intercourse." Patricia's mouth dropped open, but she shut it quickly. Whatever she had been expecting, it had not been that. Eric frankness was a trait that I admired, but it did take some getting used to if weren't prepared for it. "I do share with her my blood, as well, to replenish what I have taken, so no alarm is necessary."
"But…if she takes your blood, that's drug use isn't it?"
"It's not, Patricia." I answered as Eric had pursed his lips to keep control over his laughter. Human ignorance often amused him greatly, and this was one of those times. "Drinking a small amount of blood from a vampire lover is a way to form a bond, and to heal. What constitutes vampire blood is a drug is the aging outside of a vampire's body; when it's put in vials for sale it goes bad, and creates a hallucinogenic substance. So, when I drink a bit of Eric's blood, it's not considered drug use."
"I did not know that." Marci said. "So, you two have a blood bond, I assume? How does that work? I suspect that it's not like a Dracula-type bond."
"No, I am not his servant." I chuckled at the thought of being Eric's servant. Imagining myself like his human employee, and too much glamoured, Ginger was one of the funniest things I had contemplated. "Eric is able to sense my emotions, and can always find me wherever I am. If I were ever in danger, and he were somewhere else, the bond would let him be aware of my fear, and he could come to me."
"You can feel her emotions, huh? What's Louts feeling now?" Patricia's question made Eric grin outright. I narrowed my eyes at him; he knew EXACTLY how I was feeling at this moment, especially toward him, and he would relish the opportunity to embarrass me. After all, teasing me was something he found pleasure in.
"Well-" He began, his eyes focusing somewhere entirely inappropriate. That grin of his paired with the way he was looking at me was not helping to calm my emotional situation.
"Eric."
"Lotus, min ljuva, I did promise transparency to assuage your friends concerns."
"That level of transparency is not necessary."
"As you desire, älskara."
"Next question." I said, my tone leaving no room for discussion. Patricia moved on.
"What do you do for a living?"
"Among many other things, I own and run a bar in Shreveport."
"Which one?"
"Fangtasia."
"Wow. Nice." Marci clearly was impressed.
"What is included in these 'many other things?'" Patricia was not to be deterred. She had a serious distrust of vampires that I had not anticipated.
"I own many real estate properties, hold a position of influence in the vampire government of which I can tell you no more than what I have, and I have had some success with financial investments. I also hold stock in many of the companies that Americans find use of every day. If you are concerned with my ability to care for Lotus financially, I can assure you that there is nothing to be concerned about."
"What about exes? Any that we should know about?"
It was my turn for my jaw to go slack; I had never considered that Patricia would dig so deeply. I was through with this conversation now. No one but myself had the right to demand to know such private things about my boyfriend.
"Calm yourself, kär. I will answer the question."
"But it's-"
"I agreed to answer whatever question was asked of me. I will keep my word." Arguing with him was like talking to a brick wall. I sat back in my chair, crossing my legs in aggravation, and kept my mouth busy with my chai tea. "I have many exes, but only one that will be of any concern to anyone."
"Why only one?"
"She is the only one that I have had a serious relationship with, before Lotus, in the last century."
"I'd say that's a valid reason." Marci agreed. She was determined to play the peacemaker tonight, I could tell.
"Tell us about her. Please." Patricia nearly made a misstep by demanding something of Eric, not by him, but by me. I had had enough of this foolishness.
"Her name is Sookie Stackhouse, well, it was. She's Sookie Merlotte, now. She married a shape shifter about six years ago. As much as I wanted to, there were things I could not give her. She wanted to live the 'normal' life, planting a garden with her spouse, taking trips to the Gulf to soak up the sun, children. I am incapable of providing these things in the manner that she desired. She did love me, and I her, but for me to keep her for my own knowing that she would never be fulfilled in the way she craved…I could not do it. She let me go, and I accepted it, as it was in her best interests. That's all I want, you know, is for my woman to be happy. No man can be truly happy if his woman is not."
"You sound like you still have feelings for her."
"In a way, yes, I do. She had awoken something within me that I was sure that I lost. It is because of her that I am able to love Lotus as I do. Sookie will always be special to me, but Lotus is the one that has my heart."
He had told me this before, but it still warmed my heart to hear it, though it pained me, too. Eric was still hurting because of his failed relationship with his ex, mostly because he couldn't give to her what she needed to be happy. My vampire was used to being able to succeed in everything he did, and his inability to fulfill Sookie had left him suffering. I hated that he still felt pain from that past relationship, pain that I could only ease so much. I squeezed his big hand so that he knew that I was there for him. He did not squeeze back, but that was a safety issue. He did not squeeze back because it would be all too easy for him to crush my hand without him realizing he was; this was also the reason that vampires did not shake hands.
"That's so sad." Patricia said, lowering her stoic mask. "I'm sorry to have brought it up."
"It's all right. The friendship between you three is dynamic, and I cannot bend it. For you to be so concerned with Lotus's wellbeing is admirable; if I weren't so striking a creature, we may have never needed to have this discussion. You would have been able to sense my intentions."
"Perhaps so."
"Are we done here?" I asked. My ire was fading, and I definitely wanted to be away from this coffee shop in case the waitress came back.
"I think so." Patricia nodded, satisfied that Eric wasn't going to devour me, for now. Later on, something would reignite her fury, and we would have to do this all over again. It was her way.
"I'll handle the bill, ladies, if you would like to return to the stall with the hideous scarves. I am pretty certain that things may become a little heated between myself and the manager, and I don't think anyone needs to see that."
"Hear, hear!" Marci said, sliding her arm through Patricia's, hoisting her up.
"Be careful." I whispered into Eric's ear as he leaned down to hug me after I stood and got my handbag situated. I knew what he planned to do, and I can't say that I did blame him. He hadn't touched his blood substitute, after all.
"I am always careful." He released me and waited until we were outside of the little patio fence before he spoke again. "Oh, min kärlek, your bag is open."
I reached around to close it, shocked that I had not closed it as was my careful custom, to find that the reason that the zipper was undone was because my sneaky boyfriend had slipped a rather excessive wad of bills in the inner side pocket. I lifted my head to find him and tell him that he would be taking it back, but he was nowhere to be found.
I sighed, smirking at little at his cleverness. He knew fully well that I would not have accepted it had he not snuck the money into my bag, and I knew that he would deny ownership of said cash from here on out. When it came to money, I never won.
No one could say that Eric did not try to keep his woman in a smile.