Author's note: I must rush in to say that these "chapters" are not (yet) intended to be stories; they don't have plots or lead anywhere. They are growing out of the notes I made when working on my SVM trilogy, and they seemed to want to be something more…
This one is an impression of Eric and Rio, from shortly after their bonding, once they have left England and gone to Louisiana; I don't know exactly where this came from: I was driving past a grove of huge willow oak trees and I had a flash of Rio sitting up in one of them, with her legs swinging, like a kid playing hide and seek…
"I will find you, Fairest…" Eric murmured as he slipped noiselessly through the trees. "I am an excellent tracker."
Was that a whisper of a laugh he heard, high up in the branches? His head lifted and turned. There! Did he see… something… flitting up high? He eased closer to a large swamp oak with a huge trunk and spreading crown. A perfect place to hide. He paused silently, looking up through the leaves. There was just the faintest trembling of the leaves that wasn't caused by wind. A slow grin spread to his gorgeous mouth.
Eric flew off the ground with vampire force, crashing through the branches, scattering twigs and shards of bark. He came to a stop, floating in front of Rio.
She straddled a massive branch, her cowboy boots dangling to either side, swinging her feet like a little girl. Her shining hair was tied in a knot behind her neck, and her luscious lips curved in a smile.
"I found you!" Eric crowed.
"You move like a careless cow," she replied.
Eric arched one perfect dark-blond eyebrow at her. He drifted up close and leaned in for a kiss. Her lips clung to his, warm and soft. He nibbled her bottom lip and she swayed against him. He murmured into her mouth, "And you move like the love of my life."
She slowly leaned toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and sliding off the branch, she let him take her weight. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he spun slowly down until his feet bumped the ground. He flexed his knees, gently lowering Rio to the bed of moss and leaves at the base of the tree trunk.
She sank back with a sigh. Eric had learned in the time since their bonding that she was most relaxed when she was outdoors in a natural setting. If she was surrounded by earth, air, and water she literally glowed. She was glowing now.
He held himself above her on extended arms, memorizing her lovely face. He felt her love for him and her contentment through their blood bond, and he lowered himself down for another kiss.
Rio met him partway, her extraordinary muscular body lifting up to him like a snake. She captured his mouth with hers, flicking her tongue along his teeth to check for his fangs. That gesture had become a standard part of their kissing, and he liked it. Most beings he had kissed avoided his fangs, but Rio treated them as the natural—and to her, desirable—part of him that they were. There did not seem to be anything about his vampire nature that bothered her, and most of it she actually relished. They were perfectly matched in supernatural abilities, sexual energy, intolerance for bullshit, sense of adventure, and most of all, love. She continually fascinated him, and since her blood was quite literally intoxicating to him, he was addicted to her.
Their blood connection must have shown her his admiration, because she raised her hands to her hair, unknotting it and spreading it out around her head like a magical cloud of spun gold. He sighed too.
"Your eyes are glowing," Rio observed and his returned her gaze. "Yours are the color of the moss underneath you," he responded. As he watched, her eyes shaded to a dusty green, like the oak leaves. His own dilated in surprise. "How do you do that?" he marveled. He was even more surprised when she stared at him intently, her look entering his head through his eyes. Her face became distant with concentration, and as he watched, her eyes became teal, turquoise, and finally, brilliant blue like his own eyes. They almost instantly reverted to her usual emerald green, but the shock had made him drop to the ground beside her.
"Oh no," Rio pouted, "come back." She tugged at his arms, trying to bring him over on top of her, but he didn't budge. She frowned a tiny bit and asked, "Did I scare you?"
Eric had to actually consider her question. "Truthfully?" he mused, "yes." She raised a hand to brush back his mane of hair where it fell across his face, and said with only the merest hint of sarcasm, "I frightened the big, powerful Viking?"
He relaxed beside her then; teasing was a more natural way of being with her; openness was still difficult for him. He used one long finger to trace the willful line of her jaw, trailing down her graceful neck, and across her collarbone to follow the opening of her denim shirt.
"I have never known anyone as powerful as me," Eric stated bluntly.
"Niall," was all she said.
"I knew him a long time, but I certainly didn't know him," Eric's voice was flat and emotionless.
"Filipe," she said.
That made him pause. "Again, I am not certain I know him. But he is my King; his power over me is because I am his subject."
"Oh Northman," Rio chuckled, "just say it: you've never been with a woman as powerful as you."
This was a subject guaranteed to get his hackles up—he had been human at a time when there were numerous revered goddesses, and he quickly grew resentful when she suggested that he had a misogynist streak. He had a loftiness to his voice when he said, "I have known many powerful women."
Rio, in her usual cut-to-the-chase manner, decided to side-step the developing discussion and get back to the heart of his comment. "I frightened you because I am powerful."
Eric looked thoughtful. "You are powerful," he started, "in a very different way from my power. Yours is magical."
Rio's eyes widened and then she did something he rarely saw: she burst out laughing with belly shaking guffaws, sputtering and gasping, tears streaming down her cheeks. He couldn't help but laugh with her, even though her mirth confused him. "Your magic amuses you?" he asked.
Rio gulped to get her voice under control. "Northman," she said, still grinning broadly, "you are the most magical creature I've ever had the pleasure to know."
He looked skeptical, so she continued, "You have no heartbeat, yet you love more fiercely than anyone; no brainwaves, yet you are a better thinker than anyone; you don't breathe, yet you can track a scent better than a hound dog. Your body has no electrical impulses, yet you move"—she ran a hand down his chest to cup the bulge in his groin—"and boy, do you move!—with strength and grace.
"You don't need to eat—it seems that everything runs right off the blood—or eliminate, and your come is pink and you cry bloodstained tears. You don't change or age or get sick.
And you think I'm more magical than you?"
"Fairest, with you, I never know what to think."
Rio gave him a smoky look, saying, "Well, how's about we just don't do anymore thinking?" Then she rolled up against him, capturing his mouth and giving him a brain-frying kiss. It was one of those kisses with lots of lips and teeth and tongue and panting and pushing and sucking, and it went on for a while.
Eric drew back and looked deep into her eyes. She sensed a reticence in him, and it made her feel all gooey that this self-possessed being might possibly be shy with her. "Fairest?" he hesitated. "Eric," Rio responded—she called him by his name more often now, especially when she wanted him to know she was feeling their connection—"you can ask me anything, you know."
He smiled at her, the soft one he seemed to reserve just for her. "Would you sing for me?"
Her face lit up. Music was something that made her very happy, made her feel connected, made her magic flow. She lay back on the tree trunk, inviting him to rest his head on her shoulder. They shifted a bit until they found a comfortable position, and she began to hum. Eric shivered as the vibrations entered his head; her voice (and especially her singing voice) carried the sounds of wind and waves and the bubbling of volcanoes. It could be soothing or exciting or arousing, but it always drew him to a place inside himself that felt safe and complete.
Rio stroked his hair and ran her fingers around his ear. Her humming began to fall into a pattern that slowly evolved into a recognizable song: "You and I, tempted by the promise of a different life…" Her other hand was trailing up and down his arm where it lay across her. "Blind romance, there'll be no half measures given half a chance…" He raised his hand to unbutton her shirt, slipping his fingers inside against her smooth skin. "And it's written in my heart, so that everybody could see it…" Eric wondered why it always seemed when she sang, she was singing something meant only for him, and she must have felt his emotions through the blood bond, because her fingers came up to his mouth, knowing he'd give them a kiss. "And it's written in my soul—after all I still believe it…" His fingers slipped down to brush the underside of her breast, then travel down inside her shirt to the waistband of her jeans, tracing the denim back and forth across her flat, warm tummy. "I still believe after all the foolish things that we've been through…" Her voice broke a bit as he wiggled his fingers down inside her pants, brushing her soft curls. "I could always make a start on something new…" The words made Eric raise his face to hers, capturing her eyes with his, a skeptical question evident in his look. "But I will always be someone who's open to…" His fingers probed deeper, and he loved the heated look that came into her eyes. "…persuasion." Her voice trailed off.
Eric looked up at her. "Am I being persuasive?" He waggled his eyebrows, an action she had grown to love. It was so completely him: funny and drop-dead serious at the same time.
"Depends," Rio murmured. "What are you trying to persuade me to do?"
"Fuck me," Eric whispered against her mouth.
Since Rio had been almost sitting up, with Eric laying against her shoulder, she only had to roll her hips to spill him off. She straddled him, holding his gaze until she was too close to see it. She pressed her tongue against his fangs, releasing a spurt of her blood into his mouth. He moaned at the raw, hot, tangy taste of it.
He swallowed and it set off sparkles inside him. They started somewhere just above his navel and just beneath his ribcage and ran out in rapid waves to the ends of his fingertips, making them tingle. There was an advertisement on human television from a long time ago—it had always made him laugh back then—he couldn't remember any longer what the consumable was, but there were ridiculous cartoon elves and whatever it was they made was "magically delicious." He no longer found that idea so absurd.
His erection was straining inside his jeans and his tongue was trying to see if she still had tonsils (now that is absurd; do fairies even have tonsils?) and his fingers wrapped around the back of her long neck, underneath the waterfall of her hair, holding her plush lips to his.
One of many miraculous things about Rio was that she never wanted to get away from him. As close as he could hold her, she always wanted to be closer. In all his centuries of being, there had never been a human woman—or even a mostly human one (he briefly thought of Rio's mother)—who did not at some point fear him and want to escape him. It had made him sad and angry and he wound up killing many of them because he hated the way they made him feel. It was an indescribable joy to be able to relax around a female of any kind.
This particular one was humming against his mouth. He pulled back a little and said, "I want to lick your voice." He felt her lips curve up in a smile as she sang ever so softly, "You move in and out…" She kissed him. He sighed. "Sing into my mouth…" Eric murmured that he wanted to. "Out of all those kinds of people, you've got a face with a view…"
"And what is my face telling you, Fairest?"
A soft, sexy smile spread slowly over Rio's face. "That I've done too much singing solo and you're ready for a duet." Eric pressed her down on the moss and showed her how right she was.