A/N: I finally got it to break loose! I hope it keeps up. :D AND the next CTD chapter is half done! I have an excite. Thanks, ilovemysteries! You are the fastest beta in the west.

Chapter 16

It was the following evening, and Eric desperately needed to catch up on work. But first he needed to contact the police and insurance company, register Sookie, decide where to stay in the interim, and replace all of their belongings. Starting with his cell phone. Sookie, of course, had literally no possessions left of her own. She'd at least been wearing her own clothes when she'd restarted her life not even a year and a half before. He also needed to find out who had glamoured Hadley to finally kill Pam, and who had tried to end him and Sookie.

And yet here he was again with his head between Sookie's thighs. She smelled and tasted exquisite, and between that and the way she was moaning his name and touching her breasts, she was driving him crazy. He was leaking all over the sheets, but he didn't care.

She grabbed his hair and pulled when she started to cum, and he bit her thigh. Her orgasm just didn't seem to stop until he licked the wounds clean.

He took just the right amount of time kissing his way back up to her mouth that she wasn't too sensitive when he got there. He started fucking her slow and deep while they kissed.

Eric pulled his mouth away and looked at her. His mouth was open, and his fangs peeked through, and she wanted him to bite her again.

"You are mine."

She closed her eyes and offered her throat to him. He licked it and sucked on it and even retracted his fangs and bit and nibbled with his human teeth, but he didn't break the skin. It all felt incredible - his mouth on her neck, his body pressed against hers, and his cock filling her and hitting her in just the right spot over and over again. His blood inside her and hers inside him. The bond joining them together.

He stopped kissing her throat and she looked back up at him. He kissed her lightly on the lips and then looked into her eyes again. This time, she could see the love instead of just feeling it.

He'd said that exchanging blood and having sex would strengthen their bond. Was this what he'd meant? She'd known that becoming his child would connect them forever, but was it supposed to feel so crazy and exhilarating and terrifying? Maybe it only felt scary because of the fairy stuff or the demon stuff or whatever it was that made her so different. Maybe it was because he wasn't really her maker. Maybe she was just broken.

She wished that she had someone to talk to about it. To have someone to ask if this was normal. Feeling like this. Feeling like his. Not just his child, but his, completely. She had been ready to lay down her existence for him. She hadn't even considered leaving the burning house without him. She hadn't been thinking about herself at all. She'd just needed to get him to safety. It went far beyond empathy or a need to do the right thing or a feeling of obligation or a desire to help her fellow man. Or vampire. Or whatever. It had been imperative. Because of devotion. Because he was hers, too. Because she loved him.

Sookie was getting lost in his eyes a little. But she was so close, and she needed to bite him. He must have known because he laid his throat against her mouth, and she sucked hard and then bit.

Eric came and took Sookie with him. After she was done, she licked the wounds on his neck and he kissed her deeply again. He rolled off of her and she rolled onto him, with her head tucked against his shoulder and her leg thrown over his. She kissed his chest and then draped her arm over it, snuggling into him. She sighed contentedly and he wrapped his arm around her and kissed her head.

She had risen a week before and, despite a few problems early on, he had been really good to her. Patient and kind and, hell, downright nurturing. Plus he was beautiful, in an indisputably masculine kind of way. And he was incredible in bed and an amazing kisser. How could she not want to fuck him all the time? Why wouldn't she want to follow him around for eternity?

She put her chin on his chest and looked up at him. His hair was a mess of tangles, and she wanted to smooth them out and then mess it up again. He tucked his arm behind his head and tilted his chin down to look at her.

"We should go."

She sighed. "Yeah."

"You need blood, and then we will go to the mall. I promised you a cell phone, and you need new clothes."

She didn't want to get up. She thought that she would have been content to spend the rest of her life lying naked in bed with him. Fucking him. Drinking his blood and having him drink hers. Being held by him... And that was enough. Suddenly terrified, she got up and dressed again in her real maker's clothes.

It was Eric's turn to sigh. She had been a little anxious, but almost perfectly happy. And now she was a frightened mess again. He wanted to reassure her that everything was as it should be, but could he make her believe it when he didn't really believe it himself? Things between them would be so much easier if they could just stay in bed all the time. And much more enjoyable. She was happy and relaxed and confident when they were making love. She was an incredible lover, but he had much to do.

He dressed, they fed on the blood that Bobby had left in the kitchenette during the day, and then they headed out to the shopping centre that Pam had always dragged him to. They stopped at an electronics store first and he got new phones for each of them while she looked through the racks of CDs.

"Want anything?"

She shrugged. "No."

He took her hand. "Let's just walk through the mall. We can stop wherever you like."

She was finally starting to relax a little bit. She definitely seemed to do better when they were touching. He rubbed her palm with his thumb. She looked up at him through her lashes and smiled.

After some prodding, she went into a few stores and picked out some new clothes. He could tell that it made her uncomfortable to spend his money, but he convinced her that it was his responsibility, and that he had enough that it really made no difference to him at all. It still amazed him - other women were happy to have him spend as much money on them as he would. And Sookie was his child. She had even saved his life.

Sookie stopped at another store, and Eric sat on the bench just outside. He was trying to get as much of his work done by phone as he could while Sookie was picking things out and trying them on.

Sookie kind of felt like pinching herself. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten anything new. Just new to her. She felt a little guilty, but he was insistent. Eric was still on the phone when she'd finished checking out (and it was really weird to use his credit card, but nobody gave her a hard time about it). She went into the lingerie place next door. She needed underwear, too.

She grabbed a red bra and panties set that she really liked and took them back to the changing room to make sure they fit. They were small and silky and fit her like a glove, and she felt sexy as hell wearing them. Really sexy. And, out of nowhere, she needed him again. Right fucking then. There was a salesgirl hovering just outside the dressing room, and Sookie stuck her head out the door and glamoured her to go back out to the sales floor.

Sookie closed her eyes and called Eric to her. She didn't know if it was going to work until she felt him coming quickly. He knocked on the dressing room door. She unlocked it, and he came in, bracing for trouble.

It wasn't the trouble he'd been looking for, but she hoped he'd be pleasantly surprised. He saw that there was no danger. Just Sookie. Dressed in a red barely-there bra and panties. It didn't take him long to switch priorities.

He closed and locked the door and grabbed a handful of her hair and kissed her hard and rough, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his fly while he was doing it. He tore off the panties and picked her up and pressed her against the back wall of the dressing room. Instead of waiting, he bit her right away. He shouldn't have done it at all, but she started to cum as soon as he started to fuck her, and it just didn't stop.

The store wasn't really that busy, but it was dangerous as hell, biting her there. Fucking her hard against the dressing room wall. If anyone looked under the door, they'd see his big boots with his jeans puddled around his ankles. He was being so reckless. He couldn't make himself give a fuck.

She had to stop breathing completely to stay silent. Nothing had ever felt like this. The fucking and the biting and the danger. She pulled the neck of his shirt down over his shoulder and bit him, too.

He came so close to crying out. It was beyond incredible. It had been only a week, but he couldn't imagine ever growing tired of having sex with her. He kissed her, tenderly this time, and after he pulled away, she wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed. She giggled breathily in his ear, and his dick, still inside her, was nearly hard again.

She whispered. "Nobody knows. But we need to pay for those torn panties."

He whispered back, "And you need to buy every pair they have in your size. I'm going to enjoy tearing them off."

She giggled in his ear again, and then kissed him. And, since they were throwing caution to the wind, he started fucking her again.

…

They each held several bags in one hand and held hands with the other. Neither one could seem to stop smiling. Eric's phone rang, and he had to let her hand go to check the caller ID.

"I'm sorry. I really need to take this."

She shrugged. "Ok. I think I'll check out the record store."

He leaned down and kissed her quickly before answering, and her stomach did the flip flop thing. She noticed that it was now far more exhilarating than scary, and she didn't know whether or not that was a good thing.

Sookie was looking through the CDs when she heard her name in someone's thoughts. Then she heard it out loud.

"Sookie Stackhouse? I thought that was you."

Sookie turned to see who had called out to her. There were half a dozen of them. Girls from Bon Temps, her age or a little older. Their thoughts were all going crazy with curiosity. And jealousy. She had disappeared suddenly more than a year before, just before the end of ninth grade, and there she was, wearing a very expensive designer tracksuit, carrying seven or eight bags from expensive stores, and looking like a million bucks.

Dawn Green had been the one who'd called out to her. She'd been pretty terrible to Sookie all through school. They'd often gone to the same parties or hung out with the same crowd, but Dawn was a real bitch. Most of the girls in Bon Temps had been. Some of the guys, too, but most of them hadn't been too bad because they'd wanted to have sex with her. Or because they already had and wanted to again.

She knew all of the other girls, too. Most not very well, but Tara Thornton was with them. Tara was pissed that Sookie hadn't told her that she was leaving, or contacted her since she'd left. Even though, really, they hadn't been close in a long time. Sookie'd been good friends with Tara in elementary school, but they'd started growing apart after Sookie's father, brother, and grandmother had died - Sookie's house had no longer been a safe place for Tara to hide from her parents. She was jealous as hell that Sookie had gotten out of Bon Temps and away from her mother and was obviously thriving. Tara was still stuck at home with her abusive alcoholic parents until she graduated next June.

Sookie grimaced on the inside, but she smiled at them, almost pleasantly. She mostly tuned out their thoughts, but not completely. She could still hardly believe the control she had over her telepathy. "Hey, guys. Long time no see."

Dawn was obviously Queen Bitch of the group. She was the one who was going to do the talking. "Have you been in Shreveport all this time? Couldn't make time to see your friends?"

Dawn, of course, had never been her friend. But Tara had.

"Nope. I lived in New Orleans right up until Saturday. I just moved back. Hey, Tara. It's really great to see you."

Eric had finished his call and had come to the record store to find Sookie. He walked up to her and threaded his fingers through hers and leaned down to kiss her. "Hello, lover."

Sookie smiled up at him, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach. "Hi."

"Eric?!" Dawn was shocked. And pissed. Really pissed. And beyond jealous. She'd had sex with Eric once a few months before, and she'd been desperate to see him again. And here he was with Sookie Fucking Stackhouse, holding her hand and kissing her. He'd called her lover. Lover! He was carrying several bags, too. From women's clothing stores. Including more than one from Victoria's Secret.

Sookie could have done without the play by play in Dawn's head of the night she'd spent with Eric (at least the parts she could remember - there were holes in her memory, likely because of the feeding), but as for the rest of it? It kind of felt good. They were all jealous of her, but Dawn was consumed with it. She did regret Tara, though.

Eric glanced over at the girls. He paused. It took him a couple of seconds to retrieve her name. "Dawn. Ladies." He remembered that Dawn was from Bon Temps. It was bound to happen eventually, but he'd hoped that they would be able to keep Sookie's return to Northern Louisiana a secret from the people in her hometown. At least until she had settled in. And here they no longer even had a place to live other than the warehouse, Pam's house, and a condo he owned in Bossier City.

He turned back to Sookie, the other girls all but forgotten. "Did you find anything that you'd like?"

"No thanks, Sweetie." Ok, so she was maybe playing it up a little bit, but it still felt natural. She called her wolves sweetie and honey and baby all the time. And, after all, Eric had been so sweet to her. Most of the time, anyway. Feeling a little evil, she reached in her pocket and handed him back his credit card.

"Ready to go?"

She hesitated. Sookie really didn't want news getting back to her mother, but glamouring them all in the busy record store wasn't really a great idea. All of the girls but Tara were staring at Eric. She wondered if she had to be looking in their eyes, or if being in their heads was enough. She started with DeeAnne, and it was easy to erase her memory of seeing Sookie. She regretted glamouring Tara, but Sookie decided that she would get in touch with her when she was ready. She saved Dawn for last, and not only glamoured her to forget seeing Sookie, she made her forget her night with Eric, too.

Sookie tried not to think about how she could reconcile that with her insistence that they should be able to sleep with other people.