First off... OH MY GOSH!
I AM SO SORRY THIS IS SO LATE! I'VE BEEN TRYING TO UPLOAD SINCE SUNDAY AND THIS SITE WAS HAVING ISSUES, I KEPT GETTING AN ERROR! And I was not the only one from what I saw from some of my other fav stories.
But here we are... what WAS Sunday's upload.
Also, for chapter 10 and 11, Charlaine Harris owns the characters and whatnot
And for chapter 10, no infringement meant to Gone With The Wind and it's owners...
(did ya'll catch the GWTW moment from chap 10?) :D
Anywho, Snoogans!
"So did things go better last night?" Claudine asked from behind me. I jumped. She hadn't been there a moment before.
"Will you stop that. You're lucky I didn't have a tray full of drinks." I said, frustrated at first, but ending with a smile.
"You're avoiding the question." she smiled back.
"I'm not avoiding anything. Last night went just fine." I said, turning away so that she couldn't see my cheeks flush. I could feel the heat building behind them.
"Just fine? Is that all you're going to tell me! I need details Sookie!" she said, practically begging for a juicy tidbit that didn't exist.
"There's nothing to tell Claudine. And I don't know that I'm comfortable telling you if something did." I said, turning back to her now that I felt the burning behind my cheeks fading away. "Is that all you came here to ask me?"
"Yep." she said very matter-of-factly. "So what are you doing tonight? Girl time with me?" she asked.
That took me aback. I just stared at her for a moment, trying to process her question. Aside from the other day, I only ever saw Claudine when she was with Niall, and they were working on my scars. Although they had said that I was related to them, they didn't exactly act like family. "I have plans, actually."
"You're ditching me for a blood sucker?" Claudine said as she crossed her arms.
"If you're serious about having girl time, why don't we plan for some other night." I replied, ignoring the insult to Eric, knowing that fighting her on it would get no where.
"I'm serious. Tomorrow night then?" she asked, and I nodded. "Good. See you then!" she said, and popped to who knows where.
I got dressed to meet Eric at Fangtasia. I didn't have a lot of time, but I had been thinking about my outfit all day so that I wouldn't take me long to get ready. I decided that since I was there to do a job, I would look the part. Not for Eric, but for the employee's that I was going to be 'interviewing'. I figured that if I looked like I meant business, whoever had done it would be more likely to think about not telling me the truth. Kind of like when a criminal sees a police officer or detective, and they're being questioned. You know they're saying they're innocent, but in their heads, they're thinking about the next lie they can tell to try to prove that point. I've seen and heard it before.
I put on my grey slacks and a deep purple blouse. I put the matching blazer over that, and put on some black heals. I left my hair pulled back in it's pony tail, but fixed it up, since it was dragging a little from a long day at work.
I freshened up my face and makeup, and headed out the door. The drive to Shreveport wasn't to bad, since any rush hour traffic there might have been on the highway between Bon Temps and Shreveport was long gone.
I pulled into the parking lot just before eight, and Eric came to the back door to greet me. I had felt him the whole day, even though I knew he was sleeping. But I could feel the smallest amount of content coming through from him. When he rose, I felt love at first, and then I felt frustration. I was just going to chalk the frustration up to the situation at the bar, and not what I figured it was probably from. The closer that I had gotten to the bar that night, the stronger I felt him, and I'm sure he felt me getting closer as well.
It took all the will power that I had not to jump right out of my car and into him arms. And I could feel him struggling with the urge to run over to me. Instead, he sauntered over to my car door and opened it for me, offering me his hand to help me out.
"You look beautiful tonight." he said as he hugged me. "I want you, Lover." he whispered into my ear, and I could feel his want pressing through his jeans.
"I thought we had business tonight." I whispered back.
"I don't care about that." he said, pulling me closer to him, nuzzling his face in the crook of my neck.
"Yes you do. And we can do this later. You know, the quicker we get this over with, the more time we can have together tonight." And with that, he released me, and took my hand, practically pulling me behind him into the bar. "Eric," I giggled, "slow down. I can't walk that fast."
"We need to hurry." he said as we reached the door.
I soon found myself in his office. He let me have the seat behind his desk, and then left to get someone called Pam and Long Shadow, along with Bruce, who he told me was his accountant for the bar. When the four of them came back into the office, I was suddenly very nervous. Eric felt it, and was trying to soothe me through the bond, but it was no use.
I looked at the other vampires that were in the room with us. The one that Eric called Pam I recognized from a few nights before when I had come here to see Eric. She smiled at me again now, and I returned it to her. Then she pushed the human man, Bruce, to the chair in front of Eric's desk. He was as nervous as I was. He was practically sweating.
"Sookie, this is Bruce." Pam said as she backed away.
"Hi Bruce." I said, shaky at first, but I resigned myself to toughen up at that moment. "May I take your hand?" I asked, reaching across the desk. Eric looked at me with a cocked eyebrow, and I looked up to him. "It's easier if I'm touching the person." I replied to his questioning look. Bruce reached out the rest of the way, and gave me his hand.
Oh sweet Jesus what the hell is going on here. This is what I get for working with vampires. I swear, if I make it out of here alive I'm finding another job. I can't take this anymore. My doc says I'm going to have a stroke if I don't lower my stress level. How can I lower it when I'm treated like this. God, and how could they even think that I took it. I helped Pam find it for Christ sake. Jesus just let me see my wife and kids again.
"Bruce, did you take the money?" I asked, although I was sure I already had my answer.
"No Ma'am." he said, and he was for sure telling the truth.
"It's not him." I said as I released his hand. Bruce seemed to relax back into his chair then.
"Bring the next one in." Eric said to Pam. Pam nodded, and lead Bruce out of the office, then returned a moment later with a waitress by the name of Ginger. Pam sat her down in the seat that Bruce had previously occupied, and I reached out to take her hand, and then froze.
I had the strangest urge to get as far away from Long Shadow as I could. I didn't dare look over at Long Shadow then either, because I was sure if I did, something bad was going to happen. I wasn't sure what, or why though.
I looked over to Eric, and tried to convey something to him other than my fear, but it only seemed to puzzle him. He kept trying to soothe me. I had no rational explanation as to why I was so nervous either. I just felt like I had been here before some how, but not this exact same situation.
I decided to just get this over with so that I could tell Eric about it once it was over.
"Hi, I'm Sookie." I said to Ginger, and reached out my hand again to her.
"Hey sugar." she said, and reached her hand back across to mine, which I found odd for some reason.
"Ginger, did you take the money?" I asked, and found that her memory around the subject was a wasteland, and I wasn't able to sort through it. She wasn't either. She had a look on her face like she was drawing a blank, and that's nearly what it looked like inside her mind.
And then it hit me, and hit me hard. I didn't even have time to process what I had just seen in my head, and it wasn't even coming from Ginger, but I was one hundred percent sure of what I had just seen. I looked up to Eric and said, "It's Long Shadow.", and before I realized what a stupid move it was to say that when he was standing right next to me, Long Shadow lunged at me. He knocked the chair that I was in backwards, and we both fell to the ground with him on top of me.
I heard Ginger scream, and I thought that I had screamed, but if I had, I didn't hear it. Long Shadow's teeth bit into my arm, and then as he was about to do whatever it was he was thinking about doing, something in his eyes changed. The fire behind them started to die, and he let out a scream of his own. I just laid there, motionless and breathless as I watched his body start to disintegrate right above mine. Blood spewed from his mouth on to me, clumps of his hair started to fall out, and his skin grew a dark grey as it ashed and flaked away. His body went limp and fell further onto mine.
Then I felt him being pulled off me, and Eric was lifting me up. I just looked at him wide eyed. His fangs were out, and his blue eyes were wide and practically burning a hole into me. I looked over to Pam, who had the same shocked expression on her face that Ginger had, but she was certainly holding it together better than Ginger was. Pam had Ginger by the arm, holding her up, and Ginger was screaming. Just screaming the most shrill scream I had ever heard.
Eric's gaze finally broke from me, and he looked over at Pam. "Shut upp henne. Få henne vår härifrån. Låt inte henne komma ihågnågot av detta." he said to her, and then turned back to me. I watched Pam and Ginger leave the office, and as soon as the door was shut behind him, I looked back up to Eric. "Are you alright?" he asked me.
"Get me out of here please." I said, although it came out hardly more than a whisper. I looked down at what was left of Long Shadow and instantly regretted it. There was really just a pool of him left now. Most of it was ashing away, and what hadn't ashed yet was sure to soon.
"Here, let me fix this." Eric said as he pricked his finger on his fang, and then rubbed it over the spot where Long Shadow had sunk his fangs into my arm. It closed the wounds fairly quickly, and I felt a little better.
Without saying another word, Eric scooped me up, grabbed my purse, and we walked out of the office and then out the back door. I was about to ask him to drive my car for me, because I wasn't sure I would be able to, when we were airborne. I had my arms around his neck anyways, but the second that Eric left the ground, they wrapped around him tighter.
"What the hell are you doing!" I screamed. I buried my face into his chest. "Can't we drive?" I asked into his shirt.
Eric laughed a little. "This is faster. I won't drop you Sookie. Look around you. It's a clear night. You can see all the stars."
"I'm fine with my view of your shirt." I said, and Eric laughed again. I could feel it rumbling in his chest.
He was right, getting home via the 'Amazing Flying Eric' was faster. He landed on my porch and put me down. I took my purse and fished my keys out. We went in, and I stopped in the kitchen first, taking off my blazer, blouse, and slacks, which were now probably ruined. I looked over to Eric, who had blood on his shirt and jeans thanks to carrying me. His fangs were back out, probably from my nearly naked body. And then I realized that I had just practically undressed in front of him without even thinking about it.
"I'm sorry." I said as I looked at his clothes, deciding not to mention anything else that was going on. "Take them off, and I'll see if I can wash that out." I said, and I had barely finished the sentence and he was already half way undressed. I smiled a little at his rush to get as undressed as I was. He handed me his shirt and jeans, and was standing there in my kitchen, in nothing more than a pair of grey boxer briefs that left nothing to the imagination. He was also slightly aroused, and caught me taking a quick peek.
"Like what you see?" he said, smirking at me and wagging his eyebrows. I rolled my eyes and blushed at being caught.
"Right now, I feel about as far from sexy as someone could get. I'm going to go shower." I said, and turned to leave the kitchen, then turned back to Eric. "Alone. And then you can use it if you want. If not, my brother has some old clothes here. There might be something that will fit you. They're in the spare bedroom." I said, and led the way. I pointed him in the right direction, and then headed into my bathroom.
I cleaned up as quickly as I could. At first I could feel Eric struggling with coming in to join me or not, but in the end, he decided not to. I finished up and put on my robe, and then went into my bedroom to find Eric laying on my bed. I had a towel wrapped around my hair and I used it to dry my hair as best I could, then joined Eric.
"Do you want to talk about what happened?" he asked as he pulled me to his side.
"I'm not quite sure what happened." I said
"You read Gingers mind, you found out it was Long Shadow, and he attacked you."
"But I didn't hear it from her." I said. "I didn't hear it from anyone. It was just there. I knew." I continued. I wasn't really saying it to Eric though, I was more saying aloud to myself what had happened.
"So you were not sure it was him when you said it was?"
"I was sure. As sure as I've ever been about anything. But I don't know how I knew. And it scares the hell out of me." I started to shake a little.
"Did you see it in your mind?" he asked. He had started to run his fingers through my damp hair and it was very soothing.
"Yes and no. I saw it, but it wasn't like I actually saw him doing it, or Ginger watching him do it. Or him telling her that he had. It was… it was like I was watching the circumstances play out, but the scene was different."
"How so?" Eric asked. He stopped running his fingers through my hair then, and turned on his side to face me, propping himself up on his elbow and resting his head on his hand.
"I was sitting there, reading your employee's, someone that I didn't recognize, and then we knew it was Long Shadow, and he attacked me."
"You saw that, and you still named him? What did this other employee look like?"
"She was a little older than Ginger, and she had brown hair, and she wore glasses." I said, recalling her image.
"That sounds like Belinda. She was going to come in next if we didn't get anything from Ginger." he said, and now he was a bit puzzled. "But you have never met Belinda. Not when you stayed with me, and not since then." he continued, saying that last part to himself. He looked back down at me then and kissed my forehead.
"And Bill was there." I blurted out. "And I think that I was there with him, and not there with you."
"Compton?" he asked, a little rage building, then subsiding.
"Yep. But I wasn't looking at him, I was just looking at you. For some reason, I was scared to look at him, even though I was there with him."
"What else do you remember?" he asked.
"That was it really." I said, my voice cracking a little at the end. But I held it together and didn't cry. "It was like I was having a vision I think."
"If it was a vision, it would have been of the actual events taking place. This, I am not sure what it is. When will you see Niall again?"
"In a few weeks."
"Tell him of this. See what he says." Eric said and I agreed.
I decided to change the subject. "Don't you have to get back to the bar?"
"We got a temporary bartender for the night so that Long Shadow could be present for the meeting since he was our partner. Pam is capable of taking care of things in my absence."
"You've been absent a lot lately. She won't be upset?"
Eric laughed a little. "Even if she is, I don't care."
We laid there for a bit after that. I ended up falling asleep at some point.
I started having one of my usual nightmares. The one where I was sunbathing, and the two fairies who kidnapped me come and take me away, and torture me slowly. Just like they had done in real life. Only this time, in my nightmare, I started to call for Eric.
I woke up to Eric leaning over me, brushing my hair from my face, planting small kisses on my lips. I took a quick gasp when I awoke, and I clung to him, wrapping both arms around his neck and pulling him to me. A few tears were making their way down my cheeks, but I was usually crying when I woke up from that nightmare.
"Sookie, shhh, I have you." he whispered into my ear.
"I called for you. In my nightmare. I've never done that before."
"You did once, while you were staying with me."
"I wanted you to come save me."
"I wish that I could have." he said into my neck. I could feel his sorrow and hurt and having to watch me relive the attack and not being able to do anything about it. I released the grip that I had on him and he leaned back. And there was a small red streak that was running down his face. I reached out and touched it, and realized that it was a tear. I kissed him then, long and hard. It took him by surprise at first, but he responded just as eagerly.
The lust and passion was rising in both of us quite steadily, and I pushed him over onto his back with no resistance and straddled him, never breaking our kiss. I was leaning over him, and I started to move my hips over him.
Eric broke our kiss. "Lover, are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes." I said and leaned back down to kiss him, but quicker than I could register, he flipped us again so that I was on my back, and he was on top of me. I giggled a little before his lips captured mine again. His body was hovering over mine, and I opened my legs to that he could fit between them. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his heck. I then realized that I was wearing nothing but my robe, and I felt his penis pressing against my center through his boxers. It was just a little pressure, and in just the right spot, and it felt amazing. I moaned a little into his mouth and gripped his neck a little tighter as I moved my hips up a little.
He broke our kiss then, and removed his boxers, and untied my robe. I took my arms out of it, and he pulled it out from under me, tossing it across the room before leaning back down and kissing me again, starting first at my lips, and then moving down my jaw, and to my neck. My hands moved over his chest and around to his back, trying to pull him back up to me as he worked his way from my neck down to my chest, but it was no use. He seemed to be on a mission and there was no stopping him.
He stopped at my breasts, paying equal attention to both with his mouth. He licked and sucked and kissed both equally while he moved a hand down my side, and then across my hip and to my most sensitive spot. He rubbed his finger over my nub and I about shot off the bed. My hips bucked and I gasped. I grabbed his hair in my hands and tried to pull him back to me but he just looked up and smiled at me as he continued to drive me to the edge with just his finger.
"Eric, please." I pleaded with him. I needed him right now. He responded to my plea by slipping a finger into me. He put his lips back down to my body, but this time, he moved down lower, and slowly made his way down my stomach until he got to just above where I wanted him most. I was writhing beneath him, and as he brought his mouth to my nub, he added a second finger. He moved slowly at first, and could feel my orgasm quickly building. I was sure that he could feel it to, and he moved his tongue from it's current task, and started to kiss my inner thigh.
"Lover, look at me." he said, and my eyes opened and met his. He kissed my thigh a few more times and then he bit and I saw gold and silver and stars and fireworks. I think I may have even screamed, but I couldn't be sure.
When I finally opened my eyes, Eric was back on top of me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he positioned himself at my entrance. He kissed me again, "Are you ready?" he asked.
"Yes. Please Eric." I said, and he pushed into me slowly. I arched my back and closed me eyes. "Keep your eyes open Lover, look at me." he said, stopping his movements. My eyes shot open and met his. They seemed a darker blue now, like the ocean. He continued then to move in to me, still slowly. He leaned down to kiss me again, and I pulled on his shoulders, trying to get him to move more in me. He could tell that I wanted him more, and he moved slower at first. "Eric, please." I gasped. "More." I said, and he pushed the rest of the way in, and I almost had another moment, but he stopped again and waited for me to come back down a little. Then he started his movements again, slowly at first, but he picked up a steady pace, and I moved with him, meeting him with my hips each time.
There was a mix of love and lust and passion moving between our bond, and I felt like it was heightening everything we did. It didn't take long for either of us to be on the edge of completion, and Eric gave a few final thrusts and I found myself floating again. That seemed to be enough for him, and I heard him practically roar before sinking his fangs into my neck, which sent another wave through me. It was like I could feel his orgasm which meant that he could probably feel mine.
Eric collapsed on top of me, but held himself with an elbow so that he wasn't completely crushing me. I felt safe there under him, and I wrapped my arms around his back while I tried to catch my breath.
"Was it always like that before?" I asked as he moved to my side and pulled me to him.
"Oh yes." he said, smirking a little.
"Even the first time?"
"Sookie," he started, and looked down to me, pulling my face up by the chin so that our eyes met, "it was like that every time. Even your first." he said, and smiled, then kissed me gently on the lips.
"I wish I could remember it." I said, a little lament in my voice.
"I can show you how it was." he said, wagging his eyebrows at me.
"Maybe it will jog my memory." I said smiling back at him.
"Well we won't know unless we try." he said, leaning back on top of me. We spent the next hour trying to jog my memory. And even though it didn't help me remember, I didn't mind.
"You know, the more that I think about it, the more that it seems like my vision was more of a memory."
"A memory?" Eric asked lazily. He was on his back, and I was at his side, tracing small circles on his chest.
"Yeah. It felt like… if I was looking back at something that had happened to me before."
"But before I found you on the road, we had never met. I had never had thirty thousand dollars taken from me." Eric said more alert. I seemed to have grabbed his attention. "How could it be a memory?"
"I don't know. It's obviously not, because we both would have known. But that's just how it felt."
We had a little more down time after that, and then I checked the clock. "When do you have to leave?" I asked, and then yawned.
"I can stay until thirty minutes to dawn. You should sleep now Sookie. Do you work tomorrow?"
"Nope, it's my day off." I replied, and yawned again.
"Can I see you again tomorrow night?" he asked.
"I have plans with Claudine, but I don't see why not later that night. What time will you be done at Fangtasia?"
"Just come when you are free. I will wait for you at the bar."
"Oh no, my car!" I said, sitting up in bed, realizing that it was left at Fangtasia. I had been so distracted, I had completely forgotten about it.
"I had Pam bring it back while you were sleeping earlier." he said, and I lowered back down to his side.
"If I sleep, you'll stay with me until you have to leave?"
"There is no where else I would rather be."