Last Chapter : Sookie is almost overwhelmed by her first sight of Las Vegas, but finds herself enjoying the chance to see new places. She gets a surprise at the Shady Fortunes Hotel when she discovers, not surprisingly, that she has an unexpected roommate.

This Chapter : The reality of her blood bond with Eric jumps into the foreground, and Sookie finds herself confronted by her conflicting emotions. It becomes painfully obvious that soon enough she won't be able to hold her feelings for Eric at bay, and she's not sure if she should embrace the idea or just run away.

I managed to convince Eric to leaving me alone in the room so I could shower without having to think about him trying to see me through the door. All my showers would have to be during the daytime from now on because there was no way I was letting him be anywhere near me, conscious, when I had a distinct lack of clothing one room over. He had waggled his eyebrows at me before I managed to give him the boot and it did nothing but stir up memories.

Actually, Eric was being a pretty good sport about all this. Maybe it just meant he really was over me… But if that was so, what was that kiss the other night?

Thinking about that kiss was probably a mistake. I remembered what it felt like, him being so close to me, and I remembered the temptation he had stirred. I'd been so close to just flinging all my worries to the wind and inviting him inside. He said he remembered everything from his time at my house. I wondered if it would be cruel to ask him what his favorite position had been.

With my mind wandering, my libido was starting to hop up and down. It had been a long time since I had gotten that kind of attention, at least not with any type of satisfying ending. Sometimes I wondered if all those sex toys that got advertised in junk email were worth the money. Something had to be better than nothing, right?

Suddenly my shower was a lot less relaxing than I wanted it to be and I thought about the last time I had made love with anyone. Quinn had the honors of being the last man I'd slept with, only my third ever, thank-you-very-much. I'm not a slut, and I was a bit of a late bloomer. Telepathy has its draw backs when it comes to being interested in sex.

I let my hands wander over myself as I finished rinsing. Doing that sort of thing alone was never really my idea of recreation, but every once in a while I got the urge to. I wondered if vampires ever did, or if they always went out and found a human when they were in the mood. I'm not normally a one-night-stand kind of gal but right about now it was sounding like a good idea, at least in fantasy.

Surprisingly that was when the shower curtain was noisily pulled aside by someone else in the bathroom. I shrieked. I was so startled I didn't even begin to think about covering myself, I just pressed back against the wall.

Eric was standing just outside the tub, eyes wide and dilated, fangs fully down, and looking at me like a man who had never dreamed of anything so alluring. He was also shirtless, with a towel wrapped around his waist that was seriously being tested on how well it was tucked in.

My first thought was to yank him in the shower with me. My second thought was that the first thought sounded like a great idea. It wasn't until my fifth or sixth thought that I realized I was being completely irrational and needed to tell Eric to get out. Of course that was when he decided to speak.

"Sookie, you have not been taking care of yourself." Well that stung. My body isn't perfect but I'd never been ashamed of it. "You're practically screaming at me to fuck you." Oh, that's what he meant.

"Eric, get out." My voice was ragged, and shaky. I didn't bother trying to cover myself even now because he'd already gotten an eyeful and if anything it probably would have made him try to pull away whatever I used to block his sight.

He looked at me with the smallest of smiles on his lips. "No."

My eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean, 'no'? You need to leave so I can finish getting ready." The words that were coming out of my mouth were completely contrary to what most of me was thinking.

"If your body is going to be shouting at me like that all night, you'll be nothing but a distraction." He stepped into the shower with me, towel still on, but it wasn't doing a good job of hiding his excitement. I felt a surge of pure lust with him that close and wanted to smack myself.

"What do you mean screaming at you?" If I ignored the fact that he was less than a foot away, obviously in the mood to jump my bones, that meant he wasn't there, right?

He licked his lips. "I can feel your want. Normally it's not this strong, but I think you were thinking about me during your shower."

I actually blushed as I tried to become part of the wall behind me. "Maybe," I said evasively, but the look on his face said I wasn't fooling him. "It doesn't mean anything, Eric, just let me be." Or fuck me, the other half of my brain added.

Eric seemed to hear that second part loud and clear. "I will never force you, lover, but I know what you want." He leaned in closer and I couldn't make myself move away. "Tell me to stop and I will." And with that, he was kissing me. Oh, it wasn't the same kind of kiss as the other night, with the heavy tangle of emotions behind it. This was pure passion. And I found that I couldn't push him away.

I really did want him.

He moaned into my mouth as I reached down and tore the towel away. His hands glided over me, exploring, teasing, and I melted for him. Takemetakemtakeme, my brain screamed, and again he seemed to hear it. I felt his hands grip my ass and lift me off the floor. He practically pinned me to the wall as he lined himself up to enter me and I couldn't form a coherent thought.

Then he hesitated, his eyes locked on mine, searching again. "Sookie?" His voice was a question and somehow, seeing him looking at me like that, saying my name, my brain managed to snap back in place.

He must have felt my panic because he immediately tensed. Gently, as though I might break apart at the slightest slip, he set me back on my feet and reached for one of the other towels. After shutting the water off, he wrapped it around my body and pulled me to him in an embrace. We stood there for a long time.

When I felt I had enough control over myself, I tilted my head back to look at him. His face was unreadable and it actually worried me. I don't think I'd ever seen him looking so sober. "Eric?"

My voiced seemed to draw him out of his reverie – another good calendar word – and he looked down. He tried to smile, but somehow he was trembling. My concern only increased. "What-?"

I was interrupted by a knock at the hotel room's door. Eric had left the bathroom door open when he came in so we could hear it easily. Actually, he would have heard it either way.

If I had to guess, and since Eric wasn't exactly sharing his thoughts at the moment I really did have to, I would have said that Eric was thankful for a reason not to talk to me right at that moment.

He grabbed one of the cotton towel robes and shucked it on as he strode for the door. I closed the bathroom door again and stared at myself in the mirror. The events of the past five minutes came crashing in on me and I almost couldn't stand to look at myself. What had I been thinking?

Scratch that, I knew exactly what I had been thinking and it was obvious that there was still a lot of stuff I needed to sort through about me and Eric. I had thought I could keep Eric-my-past-lover separate from Eric-the-vampire-I'm-bonded-to, but since it had almost just come around to bite me (hah) in the ass it was pretty obvious that I would need to spend a good long time thinking about what I wanted to say to him about it.

But that conversation would have to wait, since we had more formal obligations to worry about. I distracted myself from the circling my thoughts were doing by drying my hair and fixing my makeup. It didn't take long and soon I realized I was going to have to come out of the bathroom eventually. I almost pressed my ear to the door to listen if Eric was still there but I restrained myself. I probably wouldn't have been able to hear him anyway.

To top it all off, it appeared that the knock at the door had been Bill. He was now standing across from Eric next to the little sofa and lounge chair that took up one corner of the room, but neither of them seemed inclined to sit. I was still wrapped in my towel and all I really needed was the dress I was going to change into, so I did my best to ignore them and walked over to where it was hanging on the room's dresser door.

I could feel Bill's eyes boring holes into me as his tension grew, but I kept right on ignoring him until I got back into the bathroom to put the dress on. I'd have to skip stockings since I hadn't thought to grab them while I was out there. One last shimmy to settle the skirt around me, a last glance in the mirror to tell myself that I looked good even for a no-account lust-crazed vampire lover, and went back into the room. Eric was gone and I felt a pang of disappointment, but it didn't have time to settle before Bill was stomping across the floor at me. He grabbed my chin in one hand and forcibly turned my head side to side for a better look at my neck. He was, of course, looking for fang marks.

I slapped him.

It was funny, that I'd only had the urge to do that very rarely, but it seemed to get across exactly what I was feeling at the moment. And for once, possibly the first time ever, Bill actually looked embarrassed for himself.

"He left so suddenly, I knew it was to come to you." So Eric must have been in Bill's room when he felt my, ah, wanting. "He didn't touch you?" There was a lot of concern in Bill's voice and it told me more than I really wanted to know, both about Eric and about Bill's feelings about the blood-bond.

"I'm fine," I answered, and ignored the little birdie pecking my ears about how untrue that was.

Bill clearly didn't believe me but obviously didn't want to cause me any further discomfort so he let the subject drop. "Eric went ahead to greet the King. He said to bring you there once you were done settling yourself."

"Well, I'm as settled as I'm going to be so let's get going." I grabbed my purse from inside the carrying bag I'd used earlier that day, made sure I had my key-card tucked into it, and strode purposefully toward the door. Bill followed a step or two behind me and watched as I checked that the lock latched properly. He offered me his elbow as we walked down the hall, but I just shook my head and he dropped it.

I was going to meet the King of Nevada. Hopefully this time around his life wouldn't be in mortal danger soon afterwards.

Disclaimer : Charlaine Harris retains sole rights to the SVM and its characters and I am in no way attempting to infringe on the world she has created. Her characters are being borrowed as creative inspirations, and are being portrayed here merely through my interpretation of their interactions. Thanks for reading.