His lips were cold and unfamiliar. She had forgotten what it was like to kiss him. She pulled her face away and just looked at him.
"Bill, do not ever do that again. I am not yours to just be grabbing and kissing. I am not running away with you, I am not going anywhere with you." She hesitated on her words.
"Sookie, something is different. What has happened?" He took a step back.
"Bill, I don't want to hurt you. I'm sorry, but we are never going to be together again. Bill, I am in love with Eric. I am living with him in Shreveport. He is in love with me. We are very happy, I am very happy." She looked at him and waited for his response.
His eyes were defeated and hurt. He was ready to do whatever it took to make her see him. "Sookie, you will not survive. He is dangerous, he is not to be trusted. He will hurt you. Eric only loves himself, how do you think he had survived for as long as he has?" His words were cold.
"You may be right. He has survived this long because of all of those things and I am thankful for that. If he wasn't those things then I wouldn't know what this kind of love feels like. Bill we have been happy for five months and they have been the best five months of my life." She was trying to be gentle with her words. It was not working. Something inside of him snapped and he rushed to her, grabbing her.
"Sookie, you have no idea what you are doing! He will hurt you, he will never love you the way that I love you!" He was shaking her and yelling, she was terrified.
"Bill, stop, you're hurting me. Stop, please." It was as though he couldn't hear her pleading.
"He will tell you everything you want to hear because that is what he does! He will take away every part that makes you special, he will leave you with nothing! You can't let that happen, you don't love him!" He was trying to shake sense into her.
Eric could feel that she was absolutely terrified. He knew that this was not terror of a conversation that she was avoiding. It was actual fear, pain, confusion. He took off running.
"Bill, please, please, you are hurting me. Just let me go and we can talk about this. Please, Eric will be here. He'll know that you are hurting me. Please, let me go and it will be better. Bill…please!" She screamed in pain as her wrists felt like they were going to break. He suddenly saw what had happened and reacted like he had been in a trance.
"Oh God, Sookie, I'm sorry" He released her wrists and pulled her to his body and she was too scared to run. "I'm sorry…I'm sorry" He was squeezing her as she sobbed.
There was a loud crash and they both knew exactly what was about to happen. Eric came into the living room and saw her sobbing, her wrists red and raw with where she had been held and shaken. He was still squeezing her as she shook out of fear. She felt her knee's start to give and Eric quickly moved to brace her.
"Please lover, sit. I will take care of this." He took her arms and examined the damage. He kissed them lightly and looked into her eyes. She was truly frightened.
"Eric, I don't think he knew what he was doing. I don't think he had any control, it was like he was something else completely. I don't think he meant to hurt me." He may have hurt her, but she was worried about how Eric would handle this situation.
"Shh, I will handle this." He kissed her softly and turned to the stoic vampire. "You tell me why I should not kill you right now for hurting her in this way. You tell me why I should allow you to live after laying a finger on my beloved!" He had the most dangerous tone that she had ever heard. When Bill heard him say the word beloved he actually flinched.
"How can you call her your beloved? You will hurt her, you will leave her with nothing. You can have anyone you want, why her?" He dared ask the question.
"Are you questioning my love for her? I would lay down everything for her, and she would do the same for me. She is everything to me, she is my bonded. She is my entire world and I will spend every single day showing her how much I love her. What did you do Compton? You betrayed her, you lied to her, you physically, emotionally, mentally abused her." He was going to say everything he intended to say. "Every chance you got you hurt her. I will never hurt her. I will never lie to her. I may be everything that you say I am, manipulative, evil, self serving, opportunistic, sneaky. But I am also lucky, lucky because she knows all of these things and she chooses to love me anyway." He looked from him to her and saw that she had stopped crying. Now she was just looking at him as he declared his undying love in the middle of Bill's living room.
Bill looked at her and saw that she was entranced with his words. "Sookie, you can't listen to this. It is exactly what he wants you to believe." He was desperate. She snapped her eyes towards Bill.
"Bill, yes it is what he wants me to believe. It's exactly what he wants me to believe, and do you know why? Because it's the truth. I love him, I'll love him until the day I die. You can either accept that or you can say goodbye to me right now. I will not listen to you trying to convince me otherwise. I know what the truth is. If you can't handle that, well that's your problem." She walked toward Eric and took his hand in hers. They walked towards the door and she looked back towards Bill.
"It's your decision. You can be my friend and accept my life the way it is, or you can leave us alone. Good night" She gave him a deep, genuine smile.
Eric went to take her arm and she pulled back out of pain, he had forgotten the marks that Bill had left.
"I am sorry, I was lost in the moment and forgot your discomfort. Please excuse me" Before she could protest he had walked back into Bill's house. She heard a few heated words and a thud. Eric had gone back inside, made it very clear that he was never to lay another finger on her body, and for added measure, knocked him out.
She watched him as he walked out of the house, he was proud that he had protected what was his. She was not to pleased with what had just happened, but, things could have been worse, right?
"Eric, I love you. Really, what you said in there. You said everything that I had wanted to, but couldn't. You're right, I would lay down everything for you. I'm happy that you came when you did." She could feel her eyes begin to tear again and she quickly kissed him. She wrapped her arms around him, thankful to he held in his arms. She buried her face into his chest and was silent.
"Lover, there isn't anything I wouldn't do to protect you. He knows nothing of our relationship or how deep my love for you truly is. I would gladly kill him if that is what you wished. I will always love you, I plan on showing you every day just how much I love you. I felt it when he hurt you, you were scared and you were desperate for help. You could only think of me, you knew that I would protect you. I knew when he kissed you, I felt how he caught you off guard and you were uneasy. It took all that I had not to come here and break his neck. But, I knew that you were able to handle the situation and that you had not yet told him of us. But when I felt your fear, when I felt your pain, I knew that I could no longer hold off. I knew that I needed to get to you. Sookie, I was afraid for you also. I'm sorry you were here alone." He looked into her eyes and he was truly sorry.
"Do not be sorry, this was my choice. I wanted it this way. We are fine now, I will heal and we will be fine. Now that Bill knows we can go about our lives. We can go home and make love and go to sleep. When I get off of work tomorrow afternoon I'll drive back from Bon Temps and get into bed with you, everything will be fine. I love you…I love you." She pulled him in for another passionate kiss. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and he let himself rub against her body. She laughed and broke from his lips.
"Ah, baby, I never thought I'd actually say this, but…you got a stake in your pocket or you just happy to see me?" She moved her eyes towards his pants. He looked at her like she had just turned into a vampire in front if his very eyes.
"What?" He was confused and then suddenly he rubbed his hands down the side of his jeans. The ring box, the ring box was in his pocket and she had felt it on her body. Apparently this was his moment, no flowers, no candles, no dinner, no sentimental gestures. Just them. He looked at her and he smiled at her in a way that she had never seen before. She instantly melted into his eyes.
"Lover, every word I said in that house was the truth. I will spend every day showing you how much I love you. You have changed my entire world, and I am a better person for having you. You make me see things differently, you make me happy. You are intolerable and stubborn, but that is half the reason I love you so deeply. You accept me for who I am, just as I accept you. I love you Soookie, I will love you until I am no more." He removed the box from his pocket and he did the thing that he least expected. Out of instinct he dropped to his knee and opened the velvet box before her. "Please, Sookie, say that you will marry me." His eyes were the bluest that she had ever seen, and it was dark out under the sky. Tears flooded her eyes as she listened to her Viking ask for her hand in marriage. She looked a little more closely at him, the whites of his eyes had started to rim with red. He was unexpectedly emotional.
"Eric, it's beautiful. I have never seen anything like it." She knelt before him so they were almost on the same level. "Eric, I would be so honored to marry you." She almost couldn't get the words out of her mouth. He took the ring from the box and placed it on her finger, it was a perfect fit. He gazed at it in the moonlight, a red tear that matched the red rubies ran down his cheek.
They kissed and made love right there in the grass. Neither one of them cared if there was a human, vampire, or any other creature around to see or hear. When they finished making love there he drove them home and they made love all night. All she could think about was the new life that awaited her.
