Well, I got home from work a LOT earlier than I expected, and don't have to leave to pick up my friend from the airport for another 20 minutes, so I'm posting!

Surprise! Happy Thursday! LOL

Charlaine Harris owns the characters and whatnot.

Snoogans and Snoochie Boochies.

I woke up at around noon to the phone ringing. I leaned over Eric, and picked it up.

"Hello?" I said in a low tone. I knew it wasn't going to wake Eric, but I was still quiet anyway.

"Sookie, it's Clark. Did I wake you?"

"Yes, but it's alright. What do you need?"

"I had a message from Felipe this morning, It said that he hoped you liked your surprise, and that he would see you at the ball. What surprise did he send you?"

"Eric."

"Oh. Is he there now?" he asked, sounding a little pitiful.

"Yes, he's sleeping. Oh, and that reminds me, Felipe said he gave you an invitation for me and Eric for the ball, but you never gave it to me. Do you still have it?"

"Yeah, sorry. I can bring it to you."

"No, I will come to you. Listen, you want to meet for a late lunch? Say, an hour from now?"

He agreed, and we arranged to meet at the café at the hotel. I climbed out of bed, and went to the bathroom to get ready. I needed a shower to help me wake up, and then I tossed on some jean shorts and a t-shirt that I found in Eric's bag. I wanted to have his sent on me. I wasn't sure if Clark would be able to pick up on it, but I wanted it there just the same.

I headed down to the café, and Clark was already waiting there for me. When I walked up to him, he started to make like he wanted a hug, but I stopped short, and his arms went down. He reached into his back pocked and pulled out the invitation to hand to me. I took it, and put it in my purse. He led us in to a table that he had been sitting at before I got there. He had ordered me an ice tea with lemon, and it was waiting for me when we got to the table. We sat down, and I started to add a little sugar to my tea.

"So, Eric got here a few days early?"

"Yep, apparently he called Felipe to ask if he could surprise me, and Felipe agreed."

"That was nice of him."

"Yep, sure was." I was responding to him a little tartly. I was all business right now. I had a purpose for coming to meet him. The waiter came around with menus, and Clark ordered our usual for us. Normally, I would have been okay with that. We ate here once a week, and had pretty much settled into our favorite meals from here. But today, it was irritating, but I didn't stop him.

While we were waiting for our usual lunch, I started the conversation.

"Look, Clark, I wanted to meet with you because I have a few things I wanted to let you know now that Eric is here."

"Go ahead." he said with a sigh. I could hear him thinking that he knew what was coming. I was going to break up with him, or tell him that we shouldn't see each other again until Eric leaves. What did he mean by break up? There was no "us" to break up at all. And I couldn't really avoid him, even thought I really wanted to, but I knew that we would have to be around each other at the ball at the very least.

"Okay, I just wanted to give you fair warning that I'm going to be telling Eric about what happened between you and me." I almost said "us" but that would be driving home the point that he had made in his head that there was an "us" to break up. "Also, I would appreciate it if you left us alone as much as possible. I understand that I'm off work for Felipe until Eric leaves, unless there is an emergency, and except for the ball, but I want you to know that unless it's one of those situations, I don't want to see you while he's here."

"What about telling Felipe about Victor?"

"I think it would be best to do that just before the ball, but as of right now, I'm planning on going to him alone. I trust now that he will believe me without having to have you there. I don't want you saying anything to him on the subject until I've had a chance to talk to him about it."

He made a motion with his hand over his lips like he was zipping his mouth shut, and then locking it.

"Thank you Clark. I appreciate your cooperation in this. And as for telling Eric, I can't promise that he won't want to kill you, but I will make sure he doesn't."

I was staying as neutral toned as possible to let Clark know that I was serious. Clark simply nodded his head, and kept his eyes down. Our lunch arrived, and we ate in silence. When we were done, I paid the bill, and got up to leave. But before I did, I realized that Clark was really looking pitiful. I stopped on my way out, and put my hand on his shoulder.

"Look, I'm sorry about the way things turned out." I said, and walked back to my room.

It was going to be a few hours before Eric woke up, and I wanted to make sure that I could stay awake as much of tonight as I could. I hopped into bed with him. I curled up next to him, placing myself in his arms as best I could in his dead state, and fell asleep.

I woke up to a kiss, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. It was wonderful. I started to kiss back, and still hadn't opened my eyes. I was afraid I was dreaming again, like I had the night before, and I didn't want it to be a fantasy.

The kissing stopped, and I heard Eric chuckle. "Lover, it's safe to open your eyes, I won't disappear." he said, and pulled me in close to him. I opened my eyes to see his face, and I smiled.

"I missed this. A lot." I said, and hugged myself to him as closely as I could get.

"So, did absence really make your heart grow fonder?"

"Oh most definitely." I said, and kissed him lightly on his lips. We just cuddled like that for a while.

Eric was the first to finally speak up. "So, tell me what has happened in the last two weeks. Anything new from your stalking?"

"Well, we found out that Victor is planning on talking over Louisiana only. I think that he's going to make his move at the ball tomorrow night. He's planning on getting rid of Felipe's sheriffs here in Nevada so that Felipe can't retaliate right away. That's basically it. We haven't gotten much else from Brian."

Eric sighed, even thought technically he didn't have to breathe, it was more of an automatic response left from when he was human I think, or something that he did to blend in with humans before vampires came out of the coffin. "So, have you told Felipe any of this?" he asked.

"No, I wanted to wait until the ball. I wasn't sure before, but I think I'm going to speak to him alone before we leave tomorrow. That way, he can be on guard, and give his sheriff's enough warning to be on alert for Victor. After that, I don't know."

"I see." Eric said, and I could tell he was thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

"There's something else about the ball tomorrow that I think you should know." I said, and Eric looked down at me and cocked his eyebrow in that way that was totally adorable and sexy at the same time. "I ran into Quinn a few days ago…"

"The tiger? Really. Was his jaw healed?" Eric asked, with a slightly mischievous smile on his face.

I rolled my eyes, "Yes, he was just fine. But I asked him to do me a favor, that technically he followed through on, but didn't let me know. I had to find out from Felipe that what I asked for was here. Although, I don't think it's cause I asked, it was brought here specifically for the ball."

I had peeked Eric's curiosity, and he turned to face me on his side. He raised both eyebrows at me now, as a sign to continue.

"Well, tomorrow, the ball is for all the west coast kingdoms to meet up, and do, I don't know what. But one of the things taking place is a marriage between Northern California and Oregon." I said, hoping that he got the hint from that. But instead I found that once he was on his side, he had a perfect view of my body, and had shifted focus now. "Eric, can you pay attention to me for five more minutes please?" I said, and reached up my hand to push his chin back up to look me in the face.

"Continue." he said once our eyes met again.

"Didn't you hear what I said? Northern California and Oregon are getting married tomorrow night!" It took him a minute, but it finally sunk in, and he smiled. "So, do you think you could get your hands on it again? You managed to last time." I asked.

"I can promise you that I will do whatever it takes to 'get my hands on it' Lover. But right now, there is something else I would like to 'get my hands on' first." he said, and started to caress my side, then move his hand over my stomach, and up to my breasts, over my top. I had taken off my shorts to climb back into bed with Eric, but left the shirt that I had taken from Eric's bag when I left earlier to meet up with Clark. He noticed what I had on finally.

"Lover, did you borrow something from me?" he asked, with a wicked little smile on his face, eyebrow raised back up again.

"I had to leave for a little bit earlier, and I wanted to take something of you with me." Okay, so I was lying, a little, but it was partly true. I just didn't want to tell him yet why I wanted to have something of his on me.

"Where did you go today?" he asked, and took a whiff of my skin to see if he could tell who or what I had been around. His nose nuzzled up to my neck made me squirm a little. It tickled in a good way. A very good way. He noticed, and dropped the subject of where I had been, and continued with his previous venture. He kissed my neck where he had smelled me, and then moved a little further up to my ear, and was breathing hot air, then blowing cool air just behind my ear. It was driving me crazy!

I pulled my body closer to his, and urged him take this further, quickly. I insisted this time on taking off his shirt, and since he hadn't gotten dressed after our time together last night, he was ready to go. I pushed him over onto his back, and climbed on top of him. I leaned down to kiss his chest, and was working my way down when he had finally had enough of the foreplay. Now he was struggling to flip me onto my back, and if he had really tried, he would have been successful, but instead we got locked in a bit of a power play, each trying to take the other. He was fighting against me just enough to keep me from winning, but at the same time, I wasn't losing. We rolled around the bed like this, laughing and playing, and trying to distract the other into submission until I rolled us over one to many times, and splat, off the bed we went, and smack onto the floor. At the first sense of the fall, Eric twisted so that his back took the impact instead of me. When we landed, I lost it. I got a serious case of the giggles, and couldn't stop. I buried my face in his chest, and just laughed. Eric laughed with me at first, and then turned serious.

"Sookie." he said, and pulled my face up to meet his. "Do you love me?"

"What?" I asked. I was a little taken aback at the change in direction this had taken.

"Do you love me, Sookie?" he asked again.

"Eric, I thought we had this conversation already." I said, and started to straighten up, but he pulled me back to him.

"I want you to tell me. Has what you felt before changed?"

"Well… no." I said, not sounding to sure of my answer.

Eric rolled us over on the floor so that he was on top of me now. "Tell me Sookie, the real words this time."

"Why don't you say them!" I said in frustration. Eric was sitting up now, and pinning me in place. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my head to the side. This sent Eric into a fit of laughter. "I don't see what's so funny Eric." I said in a pout. This was positively driving me bonkers.

On the night I found out where Debbie Pelts body was buried on my property, Eric had asked me this same question. Albeit, it was in a slightly more precarious situation, it wasn't far off from this one, except for at the time, I was under the influence of the blood bond, and he was on his knees, between my legs. I don't remember that either of us had actually said 'I love you', but we had figured that what we shared was love, or as close to love as you could get. Now, blood bond was gone, pledge was gone, I wasn't being coerced by his roaming fingers in spots that drove me crazy. It was just me and him, alone, totally emotionally and physically bare for the most part.

I was starting to build a wall. With everything that was going to happen in the next day or two, I didn't want to enter a pledge with Eric under the impression that this was a real marriage. Sure, I cared about Eric, a lot. I would do almost anything for him. I did feel that I loved him on some level, but I didn't want it to be like this. I wanted us to have some normalcy to our lives before we got to this part of 'us'. I didn't want to tell him I loved him, only to be heartbroken when he had to leave, or if something happened to either of us. Or what if when I told him about what Clark had done and said. What if he left me, right after we said 'I love you'. I couldn't bare that thought. I had been heartbroken, badly, twice, by the first man I ever said those words to. I know that Eric isn't Bill, but with my track record so far with men, I didn't want to go to the 'I love you' place yet with Eric until I knew what was going to happen with this situation here in Nevada. I went back to thinking of the fears that I had when I was with Clark. I wouldn't expect to have Eric waiting around for me, or getting himself killed trying to get me out of here. I just wasn't ready to say anything to Eric yet.

"Sookie, what is going on in your head? You have a dozen emotions running across your face." he said, looking down at me quizzically, eyebrow once again arched.

"Look, I just don't want to say anything until we know what's going to happen, and that's all you're getting from me tonight, understand?"

"You love me. I can see that, but if you don't want to say it yet, I won't push you again. Tonight anyway." he said, and smiled at me, and then dove back in to continue what he had started.

We spent most of the night in bed. I had asked him a few times if he wanted to go out and walk around the strip, or we could take the limo somewhere, but he insisted that the only thing he wanted to do while he was here, was me. That made me laugh, because even for Eric, it was quite straight forward, and a little on the trashy side. But I insisted that he demonstrate, and he did, quite happy to comply with the request. The only time that we did get out of bed that night was so that I could get something to eat. I had only had lunch that day, with Clark, and I was starving. I ordered us some room service, a veggie and fruit plate for me, and some True Blood for Eric. I had asked if he wanted my blood, but he said that he wanted to make sure I was on top of my game tomorrow night for the ball, in case anything happened. Then he asked if I would take his blood, to be even more on top of my game, in case anything happened.

After fighting him on it a little, I finally agreed that at some point tonight or tomorrow before the ball, I would take his blood. I tried to insist that he take mine if I was going to take his, but he refused flat out.

After we ate, we laid on the couch for a while. Eventually, my human needs were getting the best of me, and I was starting to doze off. I asked Eric to wake me if he saw me starting to fade, but he wasn't. He said that I needed my sleep, to which I replied that I could sleep during the day, and I didn't want to miss any time with him while he was awake. That was pretty much the last thing I remembered.