Okay, one more mushy, sentimental scene before we get back to powerful, vampire Eric. Sigh, I just had to do him, oops, I mean, it, the scene, yes really,…

Love Merick

Part 12

Warm fingers trailed over my chest, tracing lines of muscle as carefully as if she were sculpting me from clay; which in a way, was exactly what she was doing, creating something from nothing, creating memories from the ether. I watched her. Her hands, colored vessels painted just under skin, throbbing with the life that sustained me. Her face, serene but focused on seeing every part of me, on committing it to her thoughts, and hopefully to her pages once we were spent. Her body, the rise and fall of her chest, breasts caressing the silk weave of the shirt, the pulsing at her throat, even the bruises around my fang marks, something I had not had time to heal her from yet. I felt her hips begin to grind tiny circles against me, provoking the stiffened response of my maleness, and my own dance against her.

Her hands came to my waist, and grasped the ties of the lounge pants I had pulled on to cover myself. Normally I did not have company, so walking about my rooms naked was the norm for me. Pam had bought them for me, insisting that I should not walk around as a heathen; that I was above that now. I disagreed with her, about the heathen part, I didn't feel I needed to be above any part of my true nature, but that is a tangent to the story I don't need to get into.

As she wound her fingers into the silken ropes she leaned down over me, and while kissing me, pushed the waistband down as far as her reach would allow. I finished the task, without ever letting her lips part from mine. She remained, hovering over me that time, her breasts touching my chest like feathers, and then she rocked back, taking the length of me into her body as she sat upright, again with a long, drawn out moan of satisfaction. Gods, her body was hot, and tight wrapped around me as it was. I reached up to her, to undo the buttons on the shirt, from the collar to the tails so that it fell open as she began to work herself over me, and I was able to see the hint of her perfect breasts, her flat abdomen, and her sex, the heat between her legs that engulfed me. I loved watching her take me.

I placed my hands on her hips, not to guide her, but to guide myself as I met her thrusts. Her skin was so soft, and yet felt so strong as she led our dance. I was happy to yield to her, and absolutely enchanted by watching where our bodies met, and how our skin glistened with the arousal from us both. She made love to me slowly, her cries quiet, just like mine, even the building of the tensions seemed peaceful and natural, and when she came for me I watched her whole body simply pause, and then tremble in a wave like the ocean's tides. Her body's convulsions pulled my climax from me in much the same complete manner, and all I wished to do was hold her body close to me, so as not to lose the connection we had in that moment.

We lay on the couch, her body on top of mine, skin pressed to mine, so much so that I feared giving her a chill. But the fireplace in the room made up for the warmth that was slowly draining away from my body after our activities. So I simply clutched her close to me, and planted kisses on her face while she traced designs on my chest.

"Am I a good person Eric?"

I had to laugh, mostly because of how absurd the question was, but of course I knew most everything about her and all she was clinging to was a silent phone.

"I want to tell you something Sookie, a few things I guess, about how wonderful and generous a soul you are."

"I could use something like that."

"I've told you of when you took me in to your home, and protected me?"

"Yes."

"It was more than that Sookie. You rescued me, found me running down a country road on your way home, without any sense of who I was or where I was. But you convinced me that you were my friend, and that I was safe with you, and you took me home. You found me clothing, and treated me as a guest. And you let me into your heart, and into your bed, you looked past everything I had ever done to see the person I was right then."

"You keep saying how terrible a person you were Eric, but I don't believe it."

"Well I thank you for that, but I have had to be very ruthless in my time. I have hurt people and killed people before."

"But not senselessly Eric."

She could not have known that but the conviction in her words gave me great comfort. And she was right. Though my definitions of justifiable homicide likely differed from hers; and not to ascribe blame, but I was born into a society of war, and died only to be reborn in another battle. But despite that I had never killed for sport, or knowingly harmed an innocent. I nodded at her, feeling warm that she could believe me so innocent and good; qualities I was trying to credit to her.

"There is another time, something you did for me that will stay with me forever, and for a vampire that is a terribly long time." I curved up the right side of my mouth in a little smirk at my joke. For her part she kissed me again.

I did not know how much she knew of vampiric nature, what we had released to the media when we revealed ourselves was but the tip of a very deep iceberg of a culture that had existed for millennia. I made the assumption that she knew little more than the press releases, and ignored the claims of the fanatics.

"There was a person who was very important to me. His name was Godric."

"Was?"

"He is gone now. Godric was my maker; the vampire who turned me. My connection to him was very deep, as it is between all vampires and their children." She nodded.

"We believed that he had been kidnapped and imprisoned by a radical group that meant to kill him. I needed to go and find him, and you offered to accompany me, knowing that you, as a human, might be able to find out where the group was keeping him, by pretending to be interested in joining their ranks." I hesitated to call it a church, not knowing how much Sookie might know of the Fellowship of the Sun, though I suspected it was very little. "It was a dangerous thing you undertook, more dangerous than we could have realized at the time since a spy betrayed you."

"Oh?"

"You were taken captive, but through the means of Godric and myself you were freed."

"Not by Bill?"

"No, he was unable to come to you." I did not intend to get into that story, or Lorena, not then. Selfishly this was my moment, mine and Sookie's.

"Oh."

"You fought in that church to help free me, and even your brother stepped up to assist us. Godric's words, which made clear the true reason he had allowed himself to be taken, ensured that we were all able to leave without loss of life."

"He let himself be kidnapped?" I loved how quick Sookie was to understand my words, I had never doubted her intelligence, well except perhaps when she had clung to Bill for so long in the face of mounting evidence of his duplicity. "Why Eric? If he knew they were going to kill him?"

"I believe it was precisely that knowledge that drove him to do as he did. If you will pardon the comparison, I believe that he saw himself as a martyr, not unlike Christ himself, hoping to take the sins of all vampires on his shoulders as they destroyed him."

"He wanted his sacrifice to bring an end to the hatred?" She was so intelligent, and my admiration for her grew even further.

"He wanted the fanatics to see that we were not all about violence, just as all humans are not violent and should not be judged by the few murderers among you. He wanted change, and I think we all might have believed that we had taken a step, however small in that direction until some of the people from the group arrived at Godric's home, where we were all celebrating his return and tried to blow us all up with a martyr's vest, peppered with silver shrapnel." She covered her mouth in horror.

"But that wasn't how he passed, was it Eric?" She spoke through her fingers, so I couldn't see her mouth, but I could see her eyes, and there was a spark of something in them, something very serious.

"No, it wasn't Sookie." I met her gaze, as if I could somehow see beyond those orbs into her mind.

"Tell me?"

"He took his own life, as only a vampire can. He was so disappointed with the events at his home, after hoping that he had made some kind of headway towards our absolution, towards his absolution, he could not find the will to continue. He was tired, and I believe he hoped that he might find some kind of personal peace within his own oblivion. He waited for the sunrise. With you at his side."

"Not you?"

"He would not allow it, and I loved him too much to defy his last request of me. He wished me to go on, I think he wished for me to find the peace he had sought."

"He did." Again her cryptic response confused me, but sparked a measure of hope.

"You stood with him when I could not, so he was not alone when his end came. I will be forever in your debt for that Sookie. I could not have born the memory of my maker alone in those final moments, it would have killed me."

She stopped looking at me, and wrinkled her brow. Her face was pointed at the still silent television, though I knew she was not watching it, she seemed miles away.

"He was very young." She said. I misunderstood at first.

"He was over two thousand years old."

"But he turned when he was a child, not yet grown to manhood?"

"Correct, he never knew his mortal age, but I would have put it at no more than eighteen."

"And his face, his eyes were deep, almond shaped, and his mouth, full? Yes?"

"Yes." I drew out the word as I stared at her.

"And his hair, brown, short, but cut oddly, roughly, framing his face in straight strands?"

"Sookie? Do you remember him?"

Then she looked at me, "I don't know Eric. I think maybe I might be getting it from you."

"But you can't read me."

"I've had your blood, maybe that makes a difference?"

Her reasoning was not without merit, the first time she had had my blood had been that night, the night of the suicide bombing. I shuddered as I remembered how I had ticked her into it, and felt slightly ashamed of myself just then; as much as I had desired that she know me, and see the true me by taking it.

"What else do you 'see' Sookie?"

"He was dressed in white." She smiled, "And he didn't have any shoes on. He looked so peaceful. He asked me to look after you when he was gone, that you really were worth my attentions. He asked me about God, wondering if God would forgive his actions as a vampire or if he would be punished? I told him that God would forgive him, that he forgives anyone who comes to him to ask. It made him happy Eric. And he loved that I stayed there with him, a human. He was surprised that I could cry for him."

"You cried for him?"

"I did. It was all peaceful for him Eric, even beautiful."

"Sookie?"

"Yes?"

"I did not know those things, you could not have pulled them from my mind no matter how good a telepath you are. You have remembered him."

"You cried as well." I nodded, "blood tears, you wanted to die with him."

"I did."

"I am glad you didn't."

"I am glad you stayed with him." I felt the tears welling again in my eyes, as much for the memory of my lost maker, as for the scrap of memory that Sookie had regained. "And I am so happy you can remember him. For his people, as well as for mine, if your name and deeds could live on it would be as if you had never passed. I am honored that he has come to you."

"Oh Eric." She leaned forward and kissed me, and then wiped the tears away from my eyes.

"Take the blood." I whispered. She cocked her head at me strangely. "It will help you heal." I ran two careful fingertips over the bruise on her neck. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's all right Eric." She smiled that same soft, tenderhearted smile and then put the fingertips into her mouth.

"It may not be enough Sookie, if you will permit me?" She nodded. I dropped my fangs and brought my thumb to one, impaling it and watching the pearl of blood well to the surface of my skin. I brought it to her lips, and closed my eyes as she took it into her mouth. I could not help but tremble as she drew from the wound and traced her tongue around it.

"Gods, Sookie." Her hands caressed mine and I felt her push her body against me again. "I need you." I pulled my hand from her grasp and her mouth and swung her up into my arms. I made love to her again in my bedroom, remembering how much I had loved her in that moment on the roof.