Hello again. Thank you all for the support! I have the next installment here for you. I have really struggled with Eric's character; I hope that both he and Sookie have come off three-dimensional and not just ambivalent and indecisive. Please enjoy!
CHAPTER V:
The air in my lungs caught in my throat. I felt like I could neither exhale nor inhale. My fingers curled around the bumper of the car and my arms felt like the suspension cables of a bridge; you might drive over them safely, so surely were they bolted to the metal below me.
My mind reeled. Eric is a force of nature: the perfect storm. The intensity of his attraction would be devastating; the flood waters of his rejection: obliterating. The fertile plains of my soul would be left barren and empty, the mountainous peaks of my heart, flattened and demolished. I feared he would leave me hallow. Eric would leave me shredded nothingness. His flame, too hot, would at first warm me blissfully, but would leave only ashes.
I blinked up at him fearfully, shrinking into myself. He was too dangerously beautiful.
"You would destroy me. You destroy me now." I finally whispered in reply.
I knew what he had meant when he had said he had wanted everything from me. He meant to consume me, eat at my spirit, devourer my heart, and nibble relentlessly on my soul.
"Do you deny wanting me? Do you deny doing to very same to me?" he spat.
"I hold no power over you. My blood may sing to you, but I could not enslave your heart. Do not pretend to be the one at risk, the one to lose." I countered quietly.
"You think I enslave you?" he repeated in a voice that seemed to say, my argument was preposterous.
"You want to own me; own me as you would own at trinket, or even a prized jewel. You do not want to love me. You want ownership, that I should belong to you, that I should be yours." I continued.
"You ought to be mine." He replied simply.
"Well, that's not what I want. Why don't you go find Yvette? She would love nothing more than to be owned and enslaved."
"I do not want Yvette. Do not speak of her to me!" He raged.
"Why? Because she is the most perfect example of your relationships with women? Because she is any evidence anyone would need to see how little you care for your conquests?" I egged him on, feeding on his anger. We were so good at fighting.
"With women in general yes. But, not with you." He was practically yelling. He stood and turned on me so that each of his arms branched on either of mine as he leaned over me. I could not tell if the maneuver was meant to be menacing or provide closeness.
"Are you blind? Can you not see the shackles that bind us?" His voice had dropped, but the anger had not.
"I refuse to be bound to you!" I spat back.
"Blind yourself to your own demise, Sookie. You belong to me. You are mine." The words were so assured and confident, I wondered if they might be true; as if, in reality, I had been chained to him since our first meeting when his eyes claimed mine from across the room and beckoned me over in a language only we could understand.
I closed my eyes to close the connection. I would choose blindness.
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We stayed this way for several minutes: my eyes squeezed tightly shut, blocking the immense Swede from my vision, feeling the minuet vibrations of Eric as he raged all around me, still externally, but the vibrations of his inner anger resounding against my skin and penetrating deeply through me.
Finally I heard a curt and strained voice.
"You should leave, before I do something we will both regret." There was a defeated quality to his tone.
I opened my eyes. He was all around me, encompassing my vision. He was the world around me. He was my world.
I tried to evade the eyes that seemed to seek me out, seemed to find me wherever I looked.
"There are many things to be regretted tonight, Eric. I wouldn't even know where to begin." I heard myself, my words more harsh than I meant them. I raised an eyebrow, "the Vampire's Kiss was most certainly a lapse in judgment."
His body seemed to become more solid and more dense. His eyes found their mark and I felt myself swimming again in blue. Perhaps, drowning would be more apt.
"You flirt with danger, little bird. Exercise some caution in the lion's den." His warning would not be repeated. It would not need to be. The threat was well understood. I needed to tread more carefully; the vampire was reaching a threshold of tolerance.
I made to stand, but found the edges of my dress pinned between Eric's steely grip and the hood of the car.
"Excuse me," I offered as politely as I could muster.
He leaned away and took a step back from the car. I worked at reorganizing my gaudy costume. I felt his eyes on my as I worked.
I found the key I had stowed in my boot and walked to the driver's side of my car.
"Are you able to drive?" Concerned now.
I looked up at him from the side of the car and gave him a soft smile.
As I was sliding into the driver's seat I heard the air buzzing of fast forwarded movement and found Eric suddenly wedged between the car and door handing me my seatbelt.
"I don't want you to leave while this discussion is unfinished. But," he added reluctantly, "We have reached an impasse for the moment. I should like to continue this conversation tomorrow evening."
"I'm not coming back here" I replied resolutely.
"I will see you tomorrow evening" he smiled, deliberately ignoring me.
"On one condition" I spoke suddenly, surprised at myself.
"I do not barter," his voice unyielding.
"You tell me where you went when you left."
His eyes grew imperceptivity harder. "No."
"I will not speak to you again until you do" I felt my right hand guide the key into its chamber and revved the car's engine to life.
Eric was not the type who regularly met with obstinacy. My refusal of him seemed to have poured accelerant on the fire. I felt his eyes like lasers boring into me, hot, angry, violent.
"I'll see you when I see you" I said mildly, looking at him a bit sadly, because I really didn't want to leave like this either.
"We will discuss it tomorrow." I nodded my head. Not knowing what "it" meant. Not sure whether or not I had won, or lost. I turned my eyes homeward and transferred my foot from the brake to the gas, leaving Eric and his relentless eye in my wake. I chanced a single glance in my rear view, but his visage had already disappeared.
I thought about this strange evening on my monotonous drive home. It was just one of a slue of insane nights that seemed to occur with more and more regularity. Had this become my normal? I had been so sure that cutting away the gangrenous appendage of supernatural would solve my problems, that breaking my relations with Bill would restore sanity to my world. It seemed that I was an addict, that I could not drop the habit. Was I hooked on crazy? Did I need all this madness in my life? Did the madness need me?
SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK? Care to give a bit of feedback to a writer who is equally addicted to reviews as Sookie is to Eric? Eric pins your dress to the hood of the car and vibrates excitedly if you do…
