I am terribly sorry for the wait in getting this chapter up. I hope you will feel that it has been worth the wait. Our story is drawing to an end soon, and I sincerely thank everyone who has taken their time to read it, and thank everyone who has left a review. You make this pursuit worthwhile.

M

Chapter 15

Sookie was fading, the night had grown short, and she had been dozing on and off for the last hour or so, but selfishly, Andre could not let her drift completely. When she did let her eyes close and her breathing slow he worked over in his mind how he could convince her to take his blood, and to take enough of it to effect the bonding. But when she sighed or started from her sleep he was devoted to her entirely, taking kisses from her mouth, and caressing her hair as shimmering eyes focused on him alone, before the lids drooped once again. Sadly thought, it was late, and he knew he would have to leave her side.

"Sookie?" He brushed his lips over her forehead. "I am so sorry, but I have to go."

She shook herself to waking again with an unhappy squint of her eyes and lips.

"I don't want you to go." The slow words made his heart ache.

"I don't want to go either." He threaded his fingers into hers and held her.

"I could make some space in my closet, and I'll put blankets over the windows?"

"You are so kind Sookie. But it isn't safe. What if your Grandmother was to come in? The fright she would have, finding me there, I could not risk it."

"I'll warn her."

"We should not warn her, but ask her permission first. Besides," he ran his fingertips down the side of her face, her fatigue was causing tears, or perhaps it was genuine unhappiness? "I do not know if I am ready to let you see me that way, incapacitated by the daytime. I don't want to frighten you."

"Why would seeing you asleep frighten me?"

"Because I don't breathe Sookie, or move, or have a heartbeat. I do not wish for you to see me like I am truly dead."

"Oh Andre."

"I will be back for you."

"Do you promise?"

"I will do better than promise, I will swear it to you Sookie; on my life and on my blood. I will return to you." Andre bowed his head, and willed his fangs to emerge. "I offer you my blood so that you will know that I speak the truth." He brought his hand up to the teeth; prepared to bite when she stilled him, putting her hand atop his.

"I'm allowed to drink your blood?" Her eyebrows had risen, and a look of apprehension colored her face, all signs of slumber now gone.

"It will not harm you Sookie." He laughed, "Or turn you into a Vampire. But, it will be my pledge to you, because I will be leaving part of myself within you. More than just my heart."

Her eyes began to look watery again so Andre knew he had chosen the correct words and actions.

"Will it do anything to me?"

"I have been told that it will make you look more beautiful in the eyes of others who see you; though I cannot see how that would be possible, as you are the beautiful woman I have even known."

She twittered a little.

"I am told that it might also give you dreams of me."

"I already have those."

"Perhaps they will be more intense?"

"Well, I have a pretty good imagination, but I guess that would be okay." The sleepy smile had wakened into something so enticing.

"Will you drink from me Sookie?"

Biting her lower lip in a darling and shy sort of way, she nodded. And so Andre bit through the fleshiest part of his palm, just below the thumb, and as the blood pearled there over the two punctures he offered it to her.

"Does it taste bad?" She questioned, looking hesitantly at the bite.

"You are the first human I have offered it to, I cannot tell you."

Warm hands took hold of his wrist and pulled the hand towards her mouth. Pursed lips first kissed the bloom, and then the tip of her tongue emerged to lick the bloodstain from her skin. Andre closed his eyes, and felt the shudder run through him at her most intimate touch. A pause, a tremble from her fingers, and then her lips came again, parted, latching onto the wound and drawing from it very carefully. A moan slipped from his parted lips, and he knew he was growing hard for her again.

Other vampires had tasted him before, Sophie Ann foremost among them, but her touch, as sensual and hungry as it had always been was nothing like that of the mortal. Sookie was so tremulous at first, hardly drawing on the little wounds at all. Her tongue carefully lapping at the thin pulses, delicate swallows rolling down her neck; he could hear the vibrations; and he echoed them in his own body. His free hand slid under her back bringing her body nearly atop his so that her hips, unencumbered by the sheets, rested over his hardened sex. He began to grind against her. She arched for him and he found himself inside her again. Only then did she release his hand and sit up atop him, her breasts heaving as he thrust against her. The ruby stain of his blood stayed on her lips, the sight of it pushing him to his edge, and then over it with a growl.

If there had been any way that Andre could have remained with Sookie that day he knew he would have. But just as he had said to her, in the kindest terms he could think of, he did not want her to look upon a corpse should she chose to check in on him. It was true, his age allowed him to remain awake past the sunrise; though not without the cost of the bleeds that caused his own blood to seep from his eyes, ears and nose, another altogether unpleasant sight. Once he found a way to bring her home, to his home, he would introduce her to these things, he would change her patterns so that she would wake with him at sunset and sleep with him at dawn. The thought of her as his lover took him into his earthen slumber with some ease, and knowing that she had taken some of his blood gave him a needed sense of peacefulness.

ooOOoo

The first thing Andre felt upon awakening was pain, and he knew it was not his. It seemed even the scant bit of blood she had taken from him had begun the process, and for that he was glad, but for her suffering he was not. It was simple to find her, at home, though he nearly forgot himself with the desire to charge through her front door to attend to her. Prudence stopped him in time, and Sookie's Grandmother opened the screen door to his controlled knock.

"Good evening Mrs. Stackhouse, I was wondering if Sookie might be home?"

"Well good evening to you as well young man, yes, Sookie is home." The face beneath the grey halo looked drawn and tired.

"Might I be able to see her?"

"She's, she's," Adele stuttered a little, though it did not seem to be out of fear by Andre's estimation.

"What has happened to her?"

"She's had a little accident."

"What?" Andre felt the muscles in his chest tighten and fangs drop, the urge to rush past the woman at the door coloring his vision red.

"Andre?" The voice from inside was soft, but laced with the tension of pain. Andre looked from the empty space behind Adele, then back to her eyes.

"She's in the kitchen, go to her." Adele mouthed, and stepped aside. As he moved Andre heard the screen door squeak closed behind him and he felt the presence of Sookie's grandmother following him, but he chose not to look backwards. He kept his pace to a mortal speed, even though he wished nothing more than to race to Sookie; even milliseconds seemed overlong then. He found her at the kitchen table, her left arm laid out on the old Formica top, cradled by her right hand, gauze draped over it, little tubes of ointments spread out around her. Her face was stained by tears, easily seen as her hair was dawn back in a ponytail; her lips pursed together as she tried to smile for him as he stopped, glaze flickering between her face and her injury.

"What has happened?" He repeated himself.

"I burned myself."

"How?"

"I was distracted and I knocked the kettle off the stove, the boiling water splashed all over my hand."

He sat just beside her and reached to carefully take her arm, lifting the gauze. Her skin was an angry red with a swath of blisters nearly as wide as a slave bracelet from just below her thumb down past the jutting bones of her wrist. She muffled a little gasp as he saw it.

"I was just going to go into town to see if I could find anything to treat it and bandage it up properly." Adele's voice was as soft as Sookie's as if she felt every stab of pain as intently as her granddaughter did. "Unless you can help?"

There was a knowledge behind the question, though it did not startle Andre much to learn yet another secret. Adele knew about more than just the existence of Vampires, she knew some of their talents, and she was offering her blessing, or perhaps a test to Andre by asking him to reveal them. He did not hesitate.

"I can help you Sookie."

"Why don't you two go somewhere more private then?" Adele smiled at them both and retired to the sitting room. Both heard as she turned up the television.

"I don't understand Andre." Sookie's eyes were still rimmed with red, and partly closed as she fought the obvious pain.

Andre stood wordlessly, and urged her to do the same, offering her his hand. Her heartbeat pulsed in his ears, her scent swirled around him and the sensation of his blood flowing in her body made him feel ethereal; as if he was in two places at once.

"Trust me Sookie. May we go to your room?"

Parted lips and wide eyes accompanied her confused nod.

"I will explain, I promise."

Andre took the lead and Sookie followed him sitting on her bed, watching him as he closed the door and began to unbutton his shirt. She did not question when he cast it over the foot of the bed and came to her, kneeling before her.

"How were you distracted Sookie?" She blushed and her head sagged to her chest.

"I was thinking of you, and of us."

He felt immediately sick to his stomach.

"I am so sorry that I have caused you this pain. But I will take it away now." He moved to sit beside her, careful not to touch her arm in his haste and concealed glee. It was not his first thought, the fortune of the accident, but it was in his mind nonetheless.

"How?"

"You must take more of my blood. It will heal you."

"How?" She repeated, still holding her arm close to her chest.

"I do not understand the mechanism of it. I only trust in the tales of magic that my maker has shared with me. Will you take it again Sookie?" A tear squeezed from the corner of her eye as she shut them with a wince.

"Yes." She whispered.

"Thank you."

Again, with careful movements Andre slipped himself in behind where she sat and urged her to lean back against his bare chest. Her warmth continued to amaze him, and at that moment her frailty began to frighten him.

"You will need to take more than last night, you must take it from my wrist, it will flow faster. Do not let it frighten you. It will heal the burn and leave no scar."

"Okay." She stuttered, letting her left arm down carefully onto her lap.

"Now drink my love." The words slipped from his mouth before he had even understood what he had said. His fangs made the crunch into his right wrist, and he brought it to her lips as his left arm cradled her, and he kissed the back of her neck softly.

Pain made her timid at first, but the flow of the blood was substantial, and Andre felt the draw of her mouth on his skin quicken, which quickened his own blood flow. He held her tighter, his fangs brushing the velvet nape of her neck as she fed from him. He could feel her body uncurling from its protective pose of discomfort as the blood did its work but yet she continued to drink, not in a hungry fashion, but in something that morphed into the erotic. Sookie turned her head with purpose, still holding his wrist to her lips, and without a word he understood what she wished for. The points of his teeth were razor sharp and her flesh parted like butter before them as he latched onto her, drinking as she drank, feeling as she felt, the tension taking them both to the point of pain and then beyond it.