Chapter 26: A Note of Tinkerbelle

"So tell me about the painting, Eric." Alone at long last, Sookie broke the silence as they descended the stairs to their bedroom. She'd noted the change in him as he viewed the painting, his eyes taking in every detail carefully.

She'd felt recognition through the bond, and curiosity burned within her.

"What has your doctor Ibsen discovered of the origins of telepathy, Sookie?" Eric countered, taking a seat upon the bed. Sookie crossed the room to him, standing between his long legs as she began to unbutton his shirt. After months of practice, she'd become quite good at negotiating the small buttons of men's dress clothes. Pushing the garment away from his shoulders, Sookie happily traced the contours of her prize, small hands trekking across the plane of his chest.

"Very little, honestly. We know that it's a genetic trait; he theorizes it's a mutation of the brain, that allows us to catch brainwaves."

"I have my own theory," offered the vampire, momentarily distracted by the smooth line of her thigh beneath his palm. His hand disappeared beneath the hem of her dress, and Sookie sighed as clever fingers toyed with the lace of her panties at her hip.

"Do tell." Her words came upon a sigh, and Eric took it as an invitation to lift her dress above her head, revealing the white lace lingerie beneath.

"I know the taste of your sweet blood, as the back of my own hand," the vampire began, planting generous kisses upon her torso. "It is a sweet vintage. Fine, and rare." He moved her to the bed, unzipping the leather boots that complimented shapely calves so well. "And though it has been centuries since last I tasted a fey, I'm certain there is a trace of it in your blood."

"Fey? You mean, like a fairy?"

"Yes, that is the popular term, though they are not like Disney's Tinkerbelle."

"How would I possibly…" Sookie trailed off in her protest. If she'd learned anything of families that night, it was that anything could be possible, somewhere along the line.

"There are notes of fey in Henrik's blood as well. And though I'm sure you would object to my tasting of the other telepaths at the center, I would place money on the certainty that they too are part fey. Fairy, as you say."

"We're fairy-human hybrids? What does that have to do with the painting?"

Eric lay down beside Sookie, propping his head on one hand, tracing circles across the skin of her soft belly. "In the last year of my mortal lifetime, my men and I skirmished with the werewolves that served Appius, my maker. We'd been tracking them through the woods, and deep in the forest they ambushed us. That battle, I was the only survivor. Badly injured, they left me for dead. I would not have lived through the night, had I not been rescued, by a woman who lived in the woods nearby. She took me to her home, and cleaned my wounds, and made me salves to help them heal more quickly.

"I stayed with her for quite some time. She cared for me when I could barely move, nursed my fragile human body back to health. It was not difficult to succumb to her attentions. She was…"

Eric's words trailed off, lost in the winding maze of his memories, a basin of past deeds vast as an ocean in his mind. For all his vocabulary, he still could hardly find words to describe her. "Ethereal," the vampire finally settled upon. "An exquisite beauty. Confident, fearless. When she swore the wolves would not dare touch her, though she lived alone in the woods, I believed her. Her hair was the color of spilt blood, her eyes chips of emerald fire - - at times, looking at her out the corner of my eye, I felt certain she couldn't be human."

"And you had a child with this woman?"

"I did not know of one, though we made love quite often, after I became well enough. But I left, before such knowledge could present itself. She asked me to stay, but my blood was poisoned by the desire for revenge. I promised I would return, after killing the one who slew my family, though she seemed to know I would not be coming back to her. A century passed, before I could return to the spot. Not even a trace remained of the cabin we'd passed such months of bliss in."

"You think she was a fairy?" asked Sookie pensively, toying with the golden hairs that dusted Eric's arm.

Eric's lips curled in a winsome smile. "In light of what I know now, it seems a distinct possibility. In those days, she was not Thyra, but Sinead. If she was a fairy, then she could still live. Their lives span millennia with ease. She could appear to her progeny the Jurgensons in the 1800s, posing as a mysterious but close relative, with a farm in Africa."

Sookie turned on her side, mirroring Eric in propping her head on her hand. "Did you love her?"

"Yes," he admitted plainly, and found Sookie smiling slightly at the admission, looking up to him. "It does not make you jealous, to hear of another woman I loved." It was not a question; he could feel its truth through the bond.

"Should I insist something unrealistic, demand you pretend I'm the only woman you've ever loved?" she countered wryly.

"Hmm. Understanding of you."

"Couldn't the world use a little more of that? Besides. I have a theory that jealousy is mostly rooted in fear, and I have no fear of losing you now. It's moot."

Eric found the conversation turning for the interesting.

"Is it? And were she to appear to us tomorrow, what then?"

Sookie raised an eyebrow in response. "What then indeed, Mr. Northman? Would you leave me for her?" Playfully she pushed at his chest with two fingers, and the vampire caught her hand up in his, pressing lips to her fingers.

"No."

"Would you want to make love to her again?"

"I might, though wanting and doing are two very different things."

"Would you grab her up and kiss her senseless with this amazing mouth of yours?" Sookie claimed the part in question with her own, clasping his lower lip between her teeth possessively, pulling a groan from deep in Eric's chest.

The vampire leaned over her, resting his weight upon his forearms with a smile that bordered on predatory. "Maybe it would serve you right," he suggested, ducking down to kiss her pulse, scraping fangs against her skin.

Oh yes, he knew.

Not the details precisely. Not the where, or when, or how. Why? Well, that was the easy part.

He also knew it had not happened again since, and that was enough for him.

He'd lived far too long, to become uprooted by something so insignificant as a kiss, when he felt so very secure in Sookie's affections.

A kiss can be many things. A greeting, a token of affection. A prelude to things to come.

In this particular instance, he suspected it might have been an apology, or very possibly, goodbye.

"Maybe," she agreed, and did not question that somehow he'd become privy to her slight indiscretion. She had not confessed; some things a woman has to keep to herself, close to her heart, for her own sanity. That moment with Henrik in his office fell into that particular category.

She would have regretted it, had it hurt Eric, but he'd not been distressed then, and certainly not now. But with the intention to set things in good balance, Sookie slid her fingers into his hair, drawing him down into a passionate lock of lips. This kiss, her mouth working against his in perfect tandem quite distinctly resounded I choose you, and that the vampire cherished to the bottom of his soul.

A/n: A short but significant chapter for your weekend pleasure. :) Hope you enjoyed! Thanks everyone!