My day started perfectly. I woke in my boyfriend's arms, warm and safe as he held me tight.

"Morning, beautiful," Quinn purred as I stretched against him.

I rolled over to face him, to cuddle and kiss him, to... well, was it my fault I always woke up horny? I liked to pretend it was the imprinting that made me feel like this, but truth be told, there had been many mornings when I'd needed just a little longer in bed before I could face the world with my usual cheery disposition, long before I knew anything about shifter mating practices.

I kissed him, pressing my body to his as his hands wrapped around my waist, pulling me in even closer.

"Morning," I grinned, delighted that he felt the same way I did.

His mind was vibrating with lust, telling me he'd been watching me sleep for hours, that he'd stayed in bed until I woke even though he needed barely half as much sleep as I did, cuddling my naked body because he knew I loved waking up in his arms. Well, and because he loved cuddling my naked body, even though it drove him utterly mad to do so when he couldn't have me right away.

As I kissed him again, the previous day's events slowly filtered back in, reminding me there were things I had to ask him, things I ignored the night before while I tried to untangle my feelings and assuage my guilt, things I still needed to deal with. I tried to convince myself they could all wait, but soon realized they couldn't. How long 'til Hunter wakes up? I wondered. How long 'til there's something else I have to deal with?

I sighed loudly, annoyed I had to stop kissing him.

"Something on your mind?" he asked. He sounded like he was happy to discuss whatever it was, but he chose that moment to slide his hot, hard cock between my thighs, making me gasp.

For a moment, I could think of nothing but him; my body had the upper hand as I squeezed him tight, hungry for more. But those questions wouldn't go away, and I stopped moving a few seconds later. I expected him to be angry, or disappointed at least, but he wasn't; he knew he was being cheeky, and fully expected me to pull away from him so we could talk. So I didn't.

"I need to ask you some things," I told him, moving my face back a few inches but keeping my legs right where they were.

He stared at me in confusion, his mind still focused on the feel of my soft, smooth thighs enveloping his cock, even if they weren't clamped down tight any more, even if I wasn't rocking back and forth to tease him now. When it dawned on him that I might stay like this while we talked, the lust-addled part of his brain cheered, even as the tactical part warned him that he was at a major disadvantage, that I was distracting and tempting him, that he'd give anything to stay like this... and even more if I teased him again. He was generally wary of feminine wiles, but when he saw his own hunger mirrored in my eyes, he melted. He trusted me completely, and if I wanted to torment him sexually to 'make' him answer a few questions, he was more than willing.

"Mmmm, interrogate away," he purred, giving me a look that promised I wouldn't be the only one teasing.

I couldn't help a lusty grin, but stifled it quickly to try to look serious... even as he wriggled around, pretending to get comfortable, 'accidentally' sliding a little higher between my thighs to position himself achingly close to where I really wanted him. I bit my tongue to keep from moaning.

"What did you say to Eric to make him want to punch you yesterday?" I asked, starting with what felt like the easiest of my questions.

He burst out laughing, embracing me as he chortled happily. "Damn, that was a great segue way," he grinned, kissing me briefly.

I gave him a confused look and he knew he'd have to explain, bringing his laughter quickly under control. I had already 'heard' that he thought what we were doing was the perfect demonstration of some point he'd been trying to make the night before, but he hadn't given me any clues about what that point was, so I was left wondering what on earth he and Eric had discussed while I was gone.

"OK, after you went to see Hunter," he explained, "he was ranting at me for, I quote, 'treating you like a concubine and not a wife'. He wouldn't shut up about me 'inflicting my baser desires' on you," he rolled his eyes as he said it, "kept insisting there were some of a man's needs that a 'woman of worth' shouldn't have to deal with, things that weren't right to do with a wife, were only OK to do with, and I quote 'concubines and bed slaves and whores', and insisting I treated you like 'a concubine at best'."

"And you said?"

"I got pissed off and told him that if he bothered listening to you, he'd know that you wanted to deal with 'all of a man's desires', that you'd much rather do whatever it was he thought was beneath you than have your man go somewhere else for it, that you have a strong, healthy libido and 'baser desires' of your own and it was cruel of him to leave you unsatisfied to keep you on some ridiculous pedestal."

"And he punched you for that?"

"Yeah, tried to. Uh, do you find any of that offensive? I didn't mean it disrespectfully, but he acted as though I'd just called you something really bad."

I could feel that he meant all of it as a compliment, that he thought a strong libido, a 'wild streak' and an open-minded desire to satisfy a mate were all wonderful qualities for a woman to have, attributes that deserved admiration and respect. I placed a hand against his face and slipped deeper into his mind, not quite believing what I skimmed off the surface. The more I probed, the purer and simpler his feelings were. To him, sex was one of life's most worthwhile pursuits, something he'd never learned to feel guilty or ashamed about. Sex for its own sake was fine, but sex with a mate was something altogether more satisfying; sex as an expression of love; sex to help bond two people together; sex to bring new life into being. He genuinely loved how demanding I was, seeing it as a chance for more intimacy and pleasure, not at all concerned that being with me might take time away from his work, or that I might sometimes want more than he had to give. To him, having a mate meant keeping her satisfied, whatever she might want, and doing so was an honor, not a chore.

"You really feel that way?" I whispered, not quite believing it, no matter how deeply I looked into his mind.

He looked puzzled for a second, then realized the deep, unconscious feelings that had suddenly surfaced in his thoughts were my doing.

"You're my mate," he said simply, "it's my privilege to take care of your needs. All your needs."

Feeling how deeply he meant it, I couldn't help but smile. But part of me simply wouldn't believe it; the part shaped by experience to know I was too demanding, too needy, unfeminine in the strength of my desires. I knew I offered intimacy too often, too easily, and deserved the rejections I often received in return. It wasn't right to ache like this, to want so much... he would humor me for a while, but then he would have more important things to do; that was simply how these things worked.

I started when his prickly tongue brushed my face, only realizing a moment later that he was licking tears away.

"What's wrong?" he asked, confused. "Did that sound like I don't think you can take care of yourself? I don't, honest, I just -"

"No," I shook my head, "it's not that... It's not what you said, it's..." I couldn't bring myself to say the rest, but he didn't speak, just waited patiently for me to finish. "I have a lot of needs," I finally whispered. "I don't expect you to... well, you know. I know I demand too much..."

My words wounded him deeply, the mere implication that he wouldn't be able to keep me satisfied hurting him in a way I hadn't expected.

"It's not you," I quickly added, "it's me, I... I'm too demanding, I know that... I'll try not to be, I promise... but if you need to say no sometimes..."

As soon as I mentioned him turning me down, he remembered what I'd unintentionally revealed about my relationship with Bill the previous evening, and it all clicked into place.

"This isn't about me, is it?" he asked, radiating relief. "This is about your exes, about things they did to you?"

"It's not really their fault that they... well, you know..."

"Couldn't keep you satisfied," he finished for me, his mind buzzing with joy.

"I don't see what's so great about that," I groused.

"Babe, you're telling me that you wanted more sex than the vampires you've dated, right?" He was delighted by the idea. "I knew fairies were impressive, but if even a vamp can't keep up with you, you really do have big lust. Big, big lust," he gave me another enormous grin.

"I don't know. I was Bill's assignment, not really his girlfriend. No wonder he didn't want me over there pestering him every night. And I really don't think I want more than Eric, he just wants to be with someone else most days, whereas I'd rather have the same person every day."

"You like to have sex every single day?" he asked excitedly, beaming at me when I reluctantly nodded. "Sometimes more than once a day?" His smile got even brighter when I nodded again. "And that's when you've been with someone a while, when you're past the initial craziness?" He was bursting with joy when I nodded to that as well. "Oh man," he exclaimed. "Just when I think you couldn't be any more perfect, you surprise me again. You're the best, babe." He kissed me ferociously then, practically devouring me in his passion.

As he did, he was mentally picturing the next dozen or so years of our lives, daydreaming about what it would be like to make love to me every single day, sometimes two or three times a day. In his mind, it was great that I wanted sex almost as often as he did. He was wondering how long it would take to learn every inch of my body, to find out every single thing I liked. That led him to wondering how long it would take to try every single thing he liked all over again to see what it's like with me, which got him thinking about how much better everything was with me and trying to figure out how much of that was because I was so incredible in bed, and how much was because he loved me so much.

For a long moment, I shared his fantasy, loving the idea of a relationship where I didn't go wanting for physical affection. Then reality crashed back in. His job involved so much travel we would rarely see each other, making what he pictured completely impossible. By some fluke, he'd had a whole month off work to be with me, and it had been wonderful, but even getting an extra week here was only possible because I agreed to do some readings at a vampire event I still knew nothing about. Somehow, it made me furious that he had me believing such an impossible dream.

"Oh, right," I snapped, pulling away from him abruptly, "you'll be here having sex with me every single day of the week."

"If that's what you want." He was completely serious, which told me he was still living in fantasy-land.

I snorted. "Sure, and your job will be done by who exactly? The house brownies?"

He stared at me for a second, then cracked up laughing. "Oh, Gutteridge would love that..." he chortled, "a house brownie and a demon overlord working together... Man, that would be the best April Fool's Day prank ever... he's been hassling me to hire a PA for years, a brownie would be perfect! I wonder if I can find one in time... You have the best ideas, babe," he chuckled, kissing me on the tip of my nose.

I gritted my teeth to keep from losing my temper; I hated being laughed at.

"I wasn't laughing at you," he reassured, as if he was reading my mind for once. "It's just such a funny idea. But you seem really upset now... what's wrong?" He stared at me expectantly until I gave in and told him.

"Look, I know this sounds great to you, but it won't be like your fantasies. Most of the time, you'll be gone for weeks at a time with your work, and I'll be here by myself, and it really won't be fun for me, wanting you and not being able to have you. At least you won't be right in front of me saying no, but still... I hate always being alone, especially when I'm with someone. Plus, if you're not here with me, and I know you really want to have sex a few times a day, then I'm gonna wonder what's happening while you're away, and-"

"Hey!" he cut me off. "That's not fair! I'm not Eric, I won't cheat on you. You have my word, and if that's not enough, you can read my mind any time you want to check up on me. I was faithful to you last time, and we only had sex, what, three or four times in however many months? I was only with you, from the first time I spoke to you, 'til weeks after you dumped me. I was climbing the walls most of the time, but I never had sex with anyone else. I was so sure you'd be worth the wait, and then you were even better, and I couldn't think of anyone else like that any more."

Every word of it was true, I could feel that clearly.

"I want you," he continued. "You're the best I've ever had, you drive me mad with lust, I love you like crazy, and you're enough for me. Especially if I get to have you every day," he grinned, thinking about all the different ways and places he wanted to make love to me.

"OK, I believe you," I conceded.

"I know I'm gonna have to figure something out with my work. I don't know exactly what I'll do yet, but I've mentioned the idea of me working out of Louisiana instead of Memphis a couple times, and my partners don't seem to mind. And I've got a few people who can handle routine events now, so I should be able to cut down on the ones I have to attend myself. And you're welcome to travel with me when I do have to go somewhere."

I was gobsmacked. "You'd do that for me?" I was so moved by the idea I could only manage a shaky little whisper.

"Of course. Why would I want to go to work when I could be here making love to you?" he grinned. "Being apart most of the time didn't work so great for either of us last time, and even if I was a big enough ass to want you to leave the place where your family have lived the last hundred seventy years to be with me, the fairy meadow was left in your care, and leaving a mystical hot spot unguarded is a bad idea. You belong here, I get that now."

"But don't you belong in Memphis?"

"I don't belong anywhere." He didn't pity himself at all, but there was still a note of sadness in his voice. "My house... I don't even go there, it's so empty and echoey. Frannie's in boarding school up north, Mom's in Arizona... My partners got another company apartment in Memphis because I stay in the first one so much. But the office there runs fine without me, I've been on the road most of the time for years. There's nothing much I'll miss there. Well, my favorite sushi place, but other than that."

His mind was usually still and orderly, but thinking about where he belonged caused a tangle of messy thoughts. I felt how much he craved a real home; his place in Memphis was a house (a huge, flashy one if the images I caught were accurate) but nothing more to him. He was already starting to think of my place as home, simply because there's someone who cares about him here... although he also loved the unpretentious comfort of the house, the acres of woods where he could run and hunt on a full moon, and the fairy meadow that made his shifter magic sizzle in his veins whenever he was near it, making him stronger and faster than ever.

"You like it here," I murmured, then kissed him sweetly.

"I really do," he grinned. "You're here, there's woods to run in, trees to climb, a real nasty warthog to go after if I need to hunt... you're even getting a swimming pool put in. It's like tiger heaven."

I laughed at the image of him splashing around in the pool in tiger form, made all the more amusing by his glee at the idea.

"Um, do you want your own set of keys to my place?" he then asked sheepishly, not quite sure why he was saying it.

I couldn't work out why he was asking, either. "I've never been there, and if you're never there... I'm not sure what I'd do with keys to a place in Memphis. I doubt my car would make it that far."

"That's what I figured." He was embarrassed he'd even asked.

"Why did you think I might?"

"Eric kept going on and on about it last night, that I treated you like, quote, 'a woman who will never hold the keys to my home'," he rolled his eyes. "It sounded like one of those weird old customs vampires sometimes get hung up on, but if it means something to you..."

"It doesn't," I reassured him. "But it does mean a lot that you'd think about moving to Louisiana to be close to me."

"I like it here," he shrugged.

"And you think I'm in some kind of danger again," I added, trying to casually bring up one of the other things I'd found out the night before, that we needed to discuss. "Because Bill's reporting everything I do to to someone. Someone other than Eric, I mean."

He sighed heavily. "Yeah, but I don't know who he's reporting to, or why," he grumbled. "He's good at keeping secrets, that one. Too good."

"Why does that bother you so much?"

He looked surprised for a moment. "Can't keep anything from a telepath, can I?" he quipped, smiling briefly. "Look, a big part of my job is making sure events we stage aren't interrupted by assassinations, or bombings, or cheating, or whatever else. Someone's always plotting something, especially the vamps, and our company has to know what's going down, when, why, who's in on it..."

"Security stuff," I nodded, thinking I understood what he was getting at.

"No, we contract out all the muscle work," he corrected. "That's the easy part. What we do... and this is all confidential, by the way, we don't even discuss it with our clients. They pay for the results but we don't tell them our methods, so you can't repeat this to anyone."

"I won't," I promised.

"We do a lot of intelligence gathering, surveillance and spying basically, plus counter-intelligence work too. We make it our business to know exactly who's planning to disrupt our events, and then we quietly make their plans go wrong. Some faulty detonators here, a too-strongly-drugged donor there, a power failure at just the wrong moment, a plane that gets delayed so the assassin misses his gig... we make it look accidental when we can, and when we can't, we know the players well enough that we can usually arrange for someone else to disrupt the plan. Angry ex-lovers are our favorite," he grinned, "vamps have so many, and you'd be surprised who turns up unexpectedly at our events."

"OK, what does that have to do with Bill spying on me?"

"Well..." he started nervously, "I'm kind of good at what I do. Tigers are naturally stealthy, and if I want to know something about someone, I can usually find out pretty quickly. I spend a lot of time working out what other people's spies are up to, and I get the job done."

"But you don't know what Bill's doing." I was starting to get the picture.

"Exactly. He reports in every night, I've heard him do it dozens of times now, and I still have no idea who he's talking to. He never gives me anything to work with - never addresses them by name, never asks a personal question, never lets anything slip. Even tracing the calls hasn't worked. The lengths he's gone to so nobody finds out who he's talking to... I thought keeping tabs on Sophie-Ann was hard work, and he clearly learned a few tricks from her, but he's taken it about ten steps further than even she would. I see vamps sneaking around every day at work, but his level of sneaky is something else. I had one of the specialists at work who owed me a favor check him out, and he's convinced Bill's a pro. I can't say I disagree, at this point. Especially because he's so casual about it, just whips a cell phone out of his pocket and chats away, like he's not up to anything at all."

"But who would even care what I do each day?" I asked incredulously. "I'm just a barmaid."

He rolled his eyes at me. "Firstly, you're telepathic, and secondly, you're the great-granddaughter of the Prince of all Fae. I can't see anyone kidnapping you to tend bar, but the other two make -"

"Kidnapping me?" I demanded. "You think someone's gonna kidnap me?"

"Looks like someone wants to," he sighed. "The most likely reason anyone would want to know all your movements is to get to you when you're not well guarded, which usually means a kidnap. Or to get onto your property undetected, but James and I deliberately left the place unattended a couple times to see if anyone turned up, and nobody did. You don't need to worry, though. You're safe here, they'd need a team of twenty or so to extract you, and if they haven't done it by now they're not gonna. If they want to get you unguarded, it means they're trying to do this quietly. Small team, no witnesses, location no-one's gonna think to check."

"And you didn't think to tell me any of this before?" I huffed.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "If I had any real information I would've told you, but vague threats don't help you stay safe, and if you start acting too vigilant they'll know we're onto them and switch to more aggressive tactics. Then James and I won't be enough to protect you, not even with you and Amelia's help. Seriously, you have to just keep to your routine now, as though you don't have any idea there's anything up. Whoever wants you is only biding their time because they're sure that sooner or later, you'll go somewhere without me, and they'll get their chance. If they realize their plan's been discovered, they'll abandon stealth tactics altogether and go with brute force instead. It's one of those horrible situations where telling you that you're in danger could actually put you in more danger, and I don't ever want to do anything that puts you in danger, so... well, I don't know if I made the right call or not."

I wanted to be mad at him for keeping it from me - I was itching to lose my temper over it - but that didn't seem entirely fair. I could feel that he just wanted me to be safe, and that he genuinely believed I'd be safer if I didn't know... but when I asked him outright, he immediately told me the truth.

"I'm not sure there is a right call," I muttered. "I hate people keeping things from me, and I hate people putting me in danger. I don't know which one I hate more."

He just nodded. "Well, if I have to choose between pissing you off or getting you kidnapped, I'll always pick option number one. Sorry."

"I'd be more pissed off if you got me kidnapped than I am that you didn't tell me," I conceded.

"That's good," he smiled. "Not completely the wrong call, then."

"I guess not," I sighed. "So someone wants to kidnap me and Bill's in on it. Just another day in Sookie's life, I guess."

"I don't know what Bill's motives are," he said tightly, "I've tried to draw him out, but he's not talking. Spies always have complex motives though, especially long-term ones. The best sources are always the ones who think they're doing the right thing by talking to you, they're the ones who give you everything. So don't be surprised if he's into something he knows very little about, or if he's been lied to so he'd cooperate."

I just nodded, still furious that Bill would tangle himself up in something like this.

"Is that all you wanted to ask me about?" he changed the subject, shifting between my thighs to remind me what we were doing before.

"No," I groaned, knowing the most difficult discussion was still ahead of me yet.