A/N: Howdy! It's that time again. :D This week is slammed (taking kid to university. *sob*), so maybe a CTD, maybe not. Hopefully? I do have a paragraph written, so no staring at an empty page waiting for something to appear on it, at least. A great big thank you to ilovemysteries for the beta magic and Ahjhg749 for putting up with me. 😬
Chapter 23
"Sookie…"
She swallowed and shook her head. "Not now, Eric. Please? Let's just get this done first, ok? We need a day person, and I need a little space from all of that right now. I'll tell you after we get back home."
He nodded and called in the next applicant.
Sookie threw herself into her work. Eric asked a few questions, but Sookie did most of the heavy lifting. By the third interview, he just sat back and watched. She was much quicker when she could just talk to people in their heads — the flow back and forth was almost instantaneous — but she kept it all out loud so Eric could hear. Between the telepathy and the glamour, though, she knew just what questions to ask and could get so much more information than he could. Not just the answers to her questions, but their nuances and feelings and all of the things your brain quickly puts together before the condensed version comes out of your mouth. She filled him in on the important things he'd missed between appointments.
Eric was very impressed. She had pulled herself together and completely taken charge. She hadn't even asked. And if she had, he would have told her to keep doing exactly as she was already doing. She asked everything that he would have, and more. She was extremely thorough and, once again, he felt lucky. Lucky to have her. Lucky that she was his. Sookie would never replace Pam — nobody could — but he would never give her up. Even if it would bring Pam back to him.
After the last candidate left, Sookie blew out a big breath, moved the papers and keyboard out of the way, and sat on the desk facing him with her legs in between his. "So? What did you think?"
He grinned. "I think that you're a hell of a copilot."
She smiled and leaned down and kissed him. Then she said, "I meant about who you wanted to hire."
"What do you think?"
She thought for a minute, scrunching up her face a little. "I think the last guy. The Were? Before that, I was leaning towards the Wiccan."
Eric nodded. "Normally I wouldn't hire a Were, but he isn't part of a pack. He impressed me, as well." And the wolf would be a good bodyguard for Sookie, if he ever needed to leave her behind for a time. Not that she would need one. But just in case. She still seemed so fragile.
He opened his mouth to ask her again about her mother, but then closed it when he felt her anxiety ratchet up. She was reading his emotions as well as he was reading hers, apparently. He would wait until they got home, just like she'd asked.
Her shoulders dropped a bit in relief. "Do you want me to call Alcide and Maria-Star to see if they know him? Or even Pack Master Flood? I met him once a while back. I know the guy isn't a Long Tooth, but they should still know who he is."
"I know Flood quite well and will definitely be in touch. But I think a call to your wolves is an excellent idea. They will have a different perspective than the pack master, I'm sure."
Eric leaned forward and kissed her this time. She thought about deepening it now, but part of her was still really messed up about seeing her mother. And she didn't want to just fuck again. She needed comfort. She pulled back.
"Let's go home. I want you to make love to me, and then I'll tell you all about it. Ok?"
He nodded. "Ok."
He kissed her again, and they headed back to Bossier City.
Pretty much all of her concentration had gone into getting every scrap of information she could out of the applicants. She hadn't wanted to miss anything. It had been easy to push all of her feelings aside. But now, with the interviews done and the decision basically made, she was falling deeper and deeper into her own head.
On the drive back, he threaded his fingers through hers and she clung to him like she was drowning. He kissed her hand and she pulled them both into her lap, sandwiching his hand between hers. Her emotions were in such a mess that it was even making him feel untethered.
He parked the car and they went inside. She leaned against him on the elevator ride to the top floor. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head.
When they got inside the apartment, she took his hand and led him to the bedroom. She sat him on the edge of the bed and stood between his legs. She put her arms around his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her and just held her for a few minutes.
She pulled back and kissed him. Just lightly at first, but soon she was clutching him to her, and her kisses had become frantic to the point of desperation.
He put his hands around her upper arms and pulled her away from him a little. "Sshhh, Sookie."
She looked up at him, and he hated to see her in so much pain. He put his hands on her cheeks and kissed her gently. "Come. Let's lie down. I want to hold you."
They undressed and lay in each other's arms. The hair on his chest was tickling her nose, but he smelled good and it made her feel better. Some of the weight in her chest lifted a little. This was home. More than her mother's house had ever been. Even more than when her father was still alive.
She snuggled in a little bit closer, taking a deep breath through her nose before she started to talk. "Her resume was all a lie. Pretty much every bit of it."
"Including her name?"
Sookie shrugged as much as she could lying down. "Sort of? Daddy used to call her Shelly sometimes. And she got married a few months back to some guy named Carlton Norris from Hotshot."
"Carlton? I'd heard that he'd gotten into some kind of trouble."
"Yeah. Apparently, he just disappeared after a cop came sniffing around, accusing Carlton of statutory rape. It was true, even though he and Mama had only been married a few weeks. The cop disappeared, too."
Eric nodded. "That is what I heard as well."
Sookie pulled her head away and looked up at him, obviously confused. "How do you even know about this?"
"Carlton Norris was a shifter. A werepanther. Hotshot is full of them. The supernatural community in Northern Louisiana is small." He shrugged the shoulder he wasn't lying on. "Word gets around."
"Was? You think he's dead?"
Eric nodded again. "His actions attracted the attention of the police. The pack doesn't want any of their secrets to get out. They almost certainly killed him for it. And the policeman as well."
Sookie frowned, but then put her head back down and relaxed into him again. "She still lives in Hotshot, not Shreveport. She lied about that, too. She's shacking up with some other guy there, but she wants to get out."
"Yes. Hotshot is… strange. They keep mostly to themselves. They are isolated. Inbred. And, while they need more breeding stock, they are not always welcoming of outsiders."
Sookie shuddered. Is that what her mother was? Breeding stock? She guessed so. "Anyhow, I wasn't really paying attention to her mind when she walked in. I was reading her resume and… Well, I was thinking about how much I wanted to fuck you again."
He laughed a little. "You're insatiable."
She pretended to scowl and kicked his leg, but then smiled at him. She reached up as far as she could and kissed the underside of his chin. He looked down and kissed her lips in return.
Sookie got up on one elbow and looked into his eyes. She tucked a piece of hair that had fallen over his forehead back behind his ear. "I can't help it. You're gorgeous. You are amazing in bed. And I am horny for you all the time."
He kissed her again. A little longer this time. "I know. And I feel the same. But, please. I would like to hear the rest first."
She nodded and blew out a big breath. "Ok. Like I said, I wasn't paying attention to her at all yet. But, really, there wasn't much to pay attention to. I think maybe her brain short circuited a bit. I didn't hear my name in her head until after I looked up and saw her. But she was already staring at me. Hard."
She lay back down and rested her head against his chest again. "My mind was going about a million miles a minute. I couldn't believe she was sitting there. You said that all of them would know about Supes, but she sure didn't before I left home. She certainly wasn't expecting to see me, either. And when I dropped fang? She kind of lost it."
"I smelled her fear."
"Yeah. She's always been scared of me. Not too scared to hurt me, of course. She just thought I was really creepy. But when she saw me sitting there, she knew that I would read her mind. She knew that she was screwed. She had no idea that you would have glamoured the truth out of her, regardless. She had never seen a vampire before."
He stroked her hair, and she kissed his chest before continuing. "She found out about the job when she was snooping through her boyfriend's emails. She bullshitted her way through the application. She was way out of her league. She had herself convinced that it would be a piece of cake. It didn't even occur to her that lying to a vampire was a really bad idea."
A bloody tear dripped onto his shoulder and ran down his arm, stark against his pale skin. He could hear the pain in her voice. "She thought that I was going to kill her."
It hurt. The pit in her stomach and the ache in her chest. "As if I would. I don't want her to die. I don't wish her any harm at all. My childhood was awful. I will never forgive her. But I know that she has a lot of demons to work through. She's so messed up. It's not that I don't blame her — I do, for so many things — but she's still my mother.
He wondered again at her lack of vindictiveness. And her vulnerability. She wasn't much like a vampire at all in so many different ways.
She sighed. "I found out what happened in the past year and a half, almost. I already told you some of it. As for the rest, she lost the house because she never paid the taxes. She met Carlton at the biker bar she hung out at and he knocked her up. That's why they got married. She got clean, but they lost the baby anyway. And then she lost everything else. She wanted to stay sober but she knew that she couldn't. Not if she was stuck in Hotshot, living in a shitty trailer with a mean drunk."
She didn't say anything for a minute or two, and he wondered if she was done.
"I told her she couldn't find the address. She drove around the city for a while and then drove home. She didn't really want the job, anyway. She should get rid of any letters or notes or emails or answering machine messages about the interview. She wouldn't remember seeing us. And she wouldn't recognize me if she saw me again."
Sookie pushed him over onto his back. She moulded herself to his side and threw her leg over his. She put her chin on his chest and looked up at him. He tucked his arm behind his head so he could look at her, too. She sighed. "Both of her husbands are dead. So are all of her children. I think that's punishment enough."
A little voice in Sookie's head pointed out that she would never be able to watch children of her own grow up, either. The ache in her chest got worse. She pushed the voice away and buried it. She kissed Eric and reached down and stroked his cock. She would try to keep frantic and desperate on the inside.