Sookie woke with a jolt, sitting straight up; she had slept like the dead despite the terrors of the night. Her vision was blurry, but without looking she knew the place was unfamiliar. She was not home. The room smelled strongly of bleach and disinfectant. She was laying on a bed under patterned sheets that appeared to have aged at least 20 years – it took little time to ascertain that she was in a no-tell hotel. She wondered how she had evaded death, how she had come to be where she was.
The last she remembered she had been in the woods, curling into a ball on the ground after breaking her ankle. She watched her fellow runner disappear from her sight; he hadn't turned back. Their enemies were closing in. But obviously she hadn't woken up dead, and she definitely was out of the woods, so to speak. She was having difficulty reconciling her current situation with her memories of the last night. It seemed impossible to believe he had come back – chosen to risk his life for her.
She wasn't sure what had happened, but she knew he had to be involved.
Her body was aching, but not in the way she expected. She looked over her wrists – no bruises. Caressed her cheek that had been bloodied from whisking past sharp branches – no lacerations. Threw the covers back and examined her ankle – no bone piercing through the skin, no wound, no scar; in fact, it was set to rights like she had never fallen at all. And to make matters more confusing, she was horny as hell. Her libido was off the charts; she was in such wanton need she was surprised she hadn't woken up with her own hand down her pants.
Except, as it turned out, she wasn't wearing any pants. She was in a foreign bed sporting only a thong and a black tank top that she discovered, when she gave it a glance, was not hers. It was slightly perturbing. And, if she was being honest, maybe a little exciting. Because it looked like the shirt he had been wearing the night before. She growled audibly in frustration; she was hot and bothered, alone, and desperate for release. She blushed as her thoughts swirled with fantasies of the man who had saved her life and, most likely, seen her naked – but it bothered her that she didn't even know his name.
"What the hell is wrong with me? I've never…I don't even know who he is."
She said out loud – talking to herself, as she was sometimes prone to do – before letting her head hang down to feel a bit of shame. At twenty-two years old, she had decided some time ago that her first time was going to be special and with someone she loved – not thrown away on a complete stranger. And yet, in this moment, her head was filled with images of tearing his clothes off and mounting him under the pale moonlight, riding him until she was overtaken by an earth-shattering orgasm, his following shortly after. She was almost regretting that she had not done just that. Her shame disappeared entirely as her lusty thoughts took over. She was on fire just thinking about how his wet shirt – the shirt that she was wearing – had stuck to him, revealing the contours of his ab muscles, giving a sneak peek of what was sure to be a delicious body underneath. She lifted the cottonish material to her nose to breathe in his musk; he smelled of the ocean. She knew that smell would forever remind her of him. She closed her eyes and imagined he was next to her, touching her, brushing his lips across her décolletage, grinding his hardness slowly against her hip. She could not remember the last time, if ever, that she had been this turned on, felt this bold.
She shuddered, reaching down into her underwear to try to bring herself some sort of relief, release.
It took only a few minutes to climax, and she found she was already greedy for more. She had never been so out of control or confused. She wondered what was happening to her. Now was not the time to sit around playing with herself – she had almost been killed the night before; there were much more important things to be thinking about other than sex. And yet, she couldn't get it off her mind. This was something new for her; her virginal mind had never been clouded by her own carnal urges. 'Maybe I've lost it' she thought; a familiar but disconcerting postulation for her. She'd always felt a little unhinged, and her nickname around town – "Crazy Sookie" – didn't help. She considered the possibility that her ability to hear other peoples' thoughts had finally pushed her over the edge, turned her fragile mind to mush.
She shook her head; no, being crazy would be too simple, too easy – her life had never been either of those things. Something weird was going on, something she had no explanation for. Her thoughts drifted back to the previous days. Who had taken her? Why? Was she going to have to be on the run forever? Her musings were interrupted by a loud knocking at the door that caused the wall to quake along with it.
"Check-out's in 17 minutes. We don't stand for squatters here and your guy only paid for the night. Get your ass in gear or fork over another sixty-five smackeroos."
She felt a little giddy to hear someone call him "her guy." But, of course, he was not her guy; he wasn't here, and she had no way of finding him. She was glad to hear he was alive, and grateful he got her the room – her purse had been lost during her abduction.
"Money," she smacked her leg at her revelation; she needed moolah. Her sex-addled mind hadn't been thinking clearly at all. How far could she really go with zero funds? "Not far enough," she answered to herself.
She knew she'd have to sneak into her old farmhouse house to grab some of the much-needed cash squirreled away under her mattress. While she was there, she may as well also pack a couple choice items. She was going to be a woman on the run now. Leaving Bon Temps behind to protect her sweet Gran, her no-good brother – Jason – from whoever was after her. It pained her to think that she might never get to see them again; they were the only family she had left.
She dressed in her dirty clothes she found scattered on the floor, but opted to wear his shirt instead of her blouse. Hers was mostly ripped to shreds. She tossed the blouse towards the dresser; perhaps the maid could use it as a rag. That nagging feeling began to creep into her mind, once again; she was missing something. She sighed, reminding herself that she could use all the time in the world to worry later, but for now, she had to get out of here. She glanced quickly about the room, spying nothing of note to tow along with her on her quick detour home.
Stepping outside, she hissed at how bright the sun was; squinting, her eyes fought to adjust. A couple of days in the dark had really affected her. She checked – the cars in the small lot all had Louisiana plates, so she hadn't been taken out of the state. That in itself was a small mercy. It would've sucked to walk farther than 10 or 20 miles home. She was not going to hitchhike; she'd heard her fair share of horror stories about what the drivers expected (and took) from young women in return. She was prepared to hoof it, even if it took all day.
In her haste to leave, she had overlooked an envelope full of cash, now hidden under her discarded blouse. It had been left on the dresser by the TV with a note that said "Whatever you do, don't go home", signed simply "E".