Sorry the chapter lengths are so inconsistent. It will level out once the kitchen is done. I think... :p

Thank you for the awesome reviews and faves!

5. Revelation

Eric knew that Alexis's elderly grandmother hadn't known what she really had when she'd left her Swedish artifacts to him. She had hoped, he assumed, that simply having such ancient artifacts would be enough to bring back his youth to him and convince him to help her protect her granddaughter.

And Alexis herself had proven surprisingly resilient. Despite what he knew could only be described as abject terror, she continued to press her personal search into her sister's disappearance. Ironically, her greatest danger came not from the investigation itself, but from her fear.

It took a great deal of character and loyalty to persevere in the face of fear as deep as hers was. And he knew that there was something more behind it beyond her sister's vanishing act. Alexis had seen something and been glamored, he was sure of it. The feelings hadn't been wiped away, just the memories. Whomever had glamored her had been sadistic, incompetent, or interrupted.

Even those emotions, though, were not keeping her from endangering herself to save her sister. The power of her terror did not cripple her, and Eric was amazed by that alone. He was not generally attracted to fragility, either. Fear, yes; that was his base nature as a vampire.

But as a man, he did not lust after fragile women. Or so he had thought. Yet her very vulnerability and her courage in the face of it tugged at him. When she was all boarded up behind her baggy clothes and her bun, she looked stalwart enough. But take the hair down and drop the glasses and she was delicate and petite.

He arrived back at Fangtasia and thought about whether he should give her his blood so that he could find her. She had a knack for trouble, for someone so generally shy.

"Your man is waiting for you in your office," Pam greeted him. "I almost had to glamor him to make him stay after you took off like that." She raked him with an irritated glance and strutted into the bar.

"What did you find?" he demanded of the private investigator he had hired.

"I believe there is such a ring between here and Mexico," he answered. "But infiltrating it seems to be difficult if not impossible. It is very closed."

"But you are certain it exists?" Eric demanded.

"Not certain, no," he replied. "I'm convinced, but most of my evidence is circumstantial."

"Give me what information you have gathered, please," he told him. "Then you may go."

The man was a human. His powers of persuasion and interrogation were limited, unlike Eric's. He would take it from there. Fury rose in him that anyone had ever dared to use his bar as a platform for human trafficking.

He put the papers aside for the moment, then went and slaked his lust—and his hunger—with one of his newer dancers, Anzhela. Her name meant 'Angel' in Russian. At one point, he had found the irony of that to be amusing, but tonight, he didn't care.

It was two am before he gave up on her and left for Arkansas. He disabled the alarm and went inside the old mansion. Re-arming it, he walked up the stairs. Opening the door, he went inside and stood watching Alexis sleep. Her hair was in a braid for sleep, and he suspected it always was.

He sat down on the bed and undid it until it was entirely free. He remembered something someone had said to him once, "Only the innocent sleep like the dead." When her hair was free, he thought she embodied the saying. She did not look childish, just innocent and peaceful in her sleep. Even moreso with her hair flowing free across the bed.

She stirred, rolling onto her back. Her eyes opened and fluttered closed, before snapping open again.

"Eric! What-"

He caught her gaze and held it. "Sleep, Alexis. Sleep and forget that I was here," he told her.

"So sleepy," she murmured, her eyes locked to his will.

"Wake up feeling peaceful," he told her, still holding her with his will.

"Peaceful," she whispered.

He released her and her eyes fluttered closed. Her lips were slightly parted in sleep and he fought the impulse to awaken her and take her and make her his in every sense. That he should be attracted to her was a phenomenon beyond his imagining. That he was so strongly attracted to her that he would actively choose to resist the impulse to take her, was beyond his ability to understand.

And she had no idea.

"What tangled webs we weave," he whispered to her, before turning off the alarm. He slipped out the door and reactivated it, speeding home moments before dawn. He had nearly lingered too long.

OoOoOoO

The next morning, Alexis woke with a sense of calm and ease that she couldn't remember having felt since she was a small child. She found that her hair had come undone during the night, and searched for the band that had held it, to no avail.

Shrugging, she got up and brushed the snarls out of it patiently before working out. She went to work, where she got strange looks and odd glances. She had never been 'sick' before, and apparently it had been the talk of the office.

It wasn't her hair, because she had defied Eric and worn it the way she wanted to. The same way she always did. It wasn't her clothes, and it wasn't her glasses.

She headed for the basement where she did her work, only to stop at the doorway. A brand new stool, plushly padded, stood where the decrepit old one had been. It was leather bound with a rotating seat. She stared at it, open-mouthed.

From behind her, Sarah said, "Some man called yesterday, asking if there were anything that you required to make your job easier. Wayne jokingly told him you could use a new stool, and you'd always wanted a rotating one. This came for you that afternoon. Express delivery."

There was a ribbon and a bow on it. Alexis walked up to it, confused. Who had sent her a chair? And such an expensive one, at that...

A small card peeked out of the bow and she picked it up. "Life doesn't have to be so hard. -Eric"

She stared at the card in confused consternation.

"Oh, who's Eric?" Sarah asked.

Alexis looked behind her, surprised to find that most of the office was gathered around, staring at her and the card in her hand.

She considered what to say. 'A vampire'? Maybe 'just some guy'? Or 'my worst nightmare'? How about 'the guy who my Mormor decided would make a better heir than me'?

"He's the executor of my grandmother's estate," she answered finally.

"I think he has the hots for you," Sarah said, nudging her with an elbow.

At that, Alexis laughed out loud. "And pigs fly every Sunday. This is a guilt gift because Mormor picked him to be executor over me."

"Nuh uh," Sarah told her. "Men don't give you gifts out of guilt until after you're married. Then those are the only ones you ever get." She sniffed and walked away.

Alexis pulled the ribbon and bow off of the chair and was glad she was in the basement away from the whispers and glances of her coworkers. Eric had drawn more attention to her in one day than she'd gotten in the ten years she'd been there before—combined.

She left late that evening, arriving home and going to the artifact room. She dusted and swept as she did every Wednesday, taking care to check each of the protective glass cases for cracks.

"What are you doing?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Eric at the door.

"I'm dusting. I don't allow the maid in here," she told him, turning back away to finish up.

"I know that," he told her, low and soft in her ear. "I meant what are you doing with your hair tortured into this disgusting bun again?"

"It gets in the way when I'm cleaning or working. And working out," she told him.

"Then wear it in a braid, but don't do this," he told her. His hands pulled at pins and she squirmed to get free.

"Stop!" she said.

His fangs snapped out and he hissed at her. She shrank backwards.

"Yes, Eric," he told her. She scowled at him. "Say it," he told her.

"No, you're not the boss of-"

Her last word turned into a strangled squeal as his fangs pierced her neck. She fought him, pulling and twisting to get away. Terror warred with unexpected feelings of desire. He overpowered her easily and she found herself held against his long, lean body. He growled as he drank from her and she found herself inexplicably, unexpectedly, and incredibly aroused.

She fell against him, and felt his cock pressing against her. His body was hard and cool.

He withdrew his fangs and she clung to him. His tongue, cool and teasing, ran over the bites on her neck. His hand was tangled in her hair, released from its pins.

"Alexis," he said, nuzzling her neck. "I'm waiting."

"You bit me!" she accused.

He twisted his hand in her hair so that she was looking up at him. "You disobeyed me," he answered. "Braided, or down. No bun," he reminded her.

She hesitated and his fangs snapped out again.

"Yes, Eric," she whispered.

He smiled and leaned forward. She was surprised to find herself disappointed when, rather than kissing her, he said in her ear, low and sexy, "Go clean up. I have news for you."