Another installment for you all...hope you enjoy. A huge thank you to everyone who's been so encouraging about this story.

As always, these characters are not mine.

Fangtasia had been booming tonight and with the cash flowing over the bar came the problems only bar owners knew to anticipate. Eric was grateful to retreat to the silence of his office, but even more grateful he still had something to look forward to. The vampire found himself anticipating their nightly talks and sat behind his desk with a smile on his face.

Instead of ringing multiple times and having a warm, sleepy voice greeting him, she instead picked up on the first ring.

"Eric?"

"Were you waiting up for me, Sookie?" What was meant to be nothing more than charming repartee made the ancient vampire consider, for the first time ever, what it might be like to have someone waiting for him at home. It was a strangely seductive thought.

"No. Well, yes, really, but not in the way you mean it," she qualified smartly.

"So you were waiting for me."

"But only so I could speak with you. Awake, I mean." A nervous laugh came through the phone line.

"Even better," he declared. "You were waiting up because you want to talk with me. I'm curious now. Do you talk in your sleep?"

"None of your business," she shot back quickly. Awake Sookie was far more guarded than her sleepy counterpart. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about, though."

"Sleep talking? I can assure you I don't. Vampires die; we don't sleep."

"No, not sleep talking!" Her laugh was slightly more natural this time and the vampire smiled in response. There was no doubt she was warming to his advances. "And I don't know if it's sleep or not, but I don't think y'all just die every morning, day after day."

"We are dead," he reminded her bluntly. He was accustomed to humans romanticizing the vampire condition, but he had hoped she wouldn't fall prey to the same behaviour.

"Are you really? When did you die, exactly?" Her tone was sassy, but he sensed a deeper train of thought emerging.

"Over a thousand years ago. Trust me, I am dead."

"You can't turn a corpse, right?"

"No. There has to be a spark of life left."

"So, you didn't die so much as you were transformed," she continued. "Death, as I understand it, is the absence of life. You, and every vampire I've met, are full of life. Seems a bit of a contradiction, don't you think?"

"I can see how you think so," he replied after a moment. Her statement had taken him aback; he'd never considered the vampire condition from that particular perspective and found himself wondering what other unique viewpoints she might offer. "But I'm more interested in knowing what you want to talk about. Are you finally going to tell me it's over between you and Bill?"

"No, I'm not." Her tone was chock full of conviction. It was a shame the vampire could not see the doubt and indecision written across her features, however. That look spoke volumes about the current state of their relationship. "I want you to tell me what you want from me."

"Where should I start, sweet Sookie?" His teasing hid the true depth of his nearly visceral response to her words. There was much he wanted from the telepath.

"You can start by cutting out the flirting, mister. I keep telling you I have a boyfriend and whatever this is going on between us is pretty darned inappropriate, don't you think?"

"Do I make you uncomfortable?"

"No." It was hardly the word for the sensations he provoked. "But you can't keep calling me just to flirt, so if there's something you're really after, you better tell me now."

"First of all, there's nothing inappropriate going on. We're just talking; getting to know one another. Second, there's nothing wrong with flirting, especially with such a beautiful woman."

"There you go again!" Her exclamation was filled with exasperation, but her cheeks turned rosy at his comments. "I know you probably say these things to all the women you meet, but you can't keep saying them to me. There is Bill and I know you don't mean it, so just cut it out."

"I do not say these things to everyone," he protested. In truth, he complimented very few women and almost never the ones he kept company with. "Why would you think I don't mean my words? Surely you know you're as beautiful as I say you are."

A flush of pleasure may have coloured her cheeks, but her head was slowly shaking back and forth even as he spoke. She knew she wasn't hideous or anything like it, but with so little experience with men - and truthfully, Bill didn't make much effort to flatter her - the telepath really didn't understand her own appeal.

"You carry on like I'm somethin' special and I'm not. I'm just an ordinary country girl." What surprised him the most was how utterly matter-of-fact she was. In his experience, most women overestimated their appeal, not the other way around.

"If all country girls were like you," he told her huskily, "we'd all be living there. You are a unique and desirable woman, Sookie. I would tell you of your beauty every evening, if you would let me."

A deep sigh whispered through the phone line to tickle his eardrum. It was impossible for her not to compare him to her boyfriend, just as it was impossible for him not to beat the comparison. He had all the right words, for all the right moments. It was harder and harder to resist him; it was equally as difficult to remember the point she was trying to make.

"There you go again. If you keep this up, I might start to believe you and then what?"

"Then you might realize it's time to tell him that it's over."

The vampire didn't know how close he was to the mark. His nightly calls had sparked serious daytime deliberation and the telepath was finally starting to question what kept her in a relationship with a man who didn't even have time for her. Even if it were over with Bill, though, it didn't mean she was ready to jump into bed with Eric Northman. He was showing her a different side, but she still believed him to be a dangerous womanizer. Devastatingly handsome and charming, but not the kind of man you gave your heart to.

"It's not over, but even if it were, whatever you think is going to happen between us, it's not." Even to her own ears, her words seemed to lack conviction, no matter how firm her tone.

"What do you think I want to happen, sweet Sookie?"

"Sex."

"I wouldn't say no," he laughed. "And you wouldn't either, if you knew what you were missing."

"It's not going to happen," she replied bluntly. "I'm not the kind of girl to sleep around and you're certainly not the boyfriend type."

"You wound me. You believe me unfit to fill a role currently played by Bill Compton? Whatever he can do, I can do so much better. You have my unbreakable word on that."

"I don't doubt it would be an exhilarating ride, Eric, but would it be worth the fiery crash at the end?"

"Ah! You wound me!" A deep, genuine chuckle travelled through the phone lines. "An exhilarating ride I can promise, but a fiery crash? You have an unique way with words, Ms. Stackhouse, not to mention a pessimistic attitude."

"Are you going to try to pretend I won't be the one picking up the pieces if I give I to your demands?" Her skepticism was evident, but what else could she believe? Bill had told her all about Eric's love 'em and leave 'em ways. The Viking vampire might be the most appealing specimen walking the earth, but monogamous he was not and Sookie knew she could accept nothing else.

"What makes you so sure there will be pieces to pick up?" His tone gave the telepath pause. The vampire sounded...offended. Her flippant accusation cut him in a surprising way. His nightly musings hadn't gone much beyond getting her to yield to him, but there was an uncomfortable truth to her words.

"What makes you believe I'm a girl who would let herself be used and left behind?" She sounded exasperated, but it wasn't him she was getting upset with. It was her own thoughts and treacherous desires that were making her uncomfortable. If the vampire only knew how much she wanted to just say yes.

"And what makes you think that is what I want from you?" The affront was still obvious in his tone, but he didn't care. Truthfully, sex was all he had wanted from the delectable telepath, but could he blamed for his shifting intentions? Every word she spoke drove the hypothetical knife deeper and deeper. Simply hearing her speak of being left behind changed every one of his intentions, even if he didn't actually understand how much they'd shifted.

"I keep asking you what you want, Eric," she reminded him tartly. "So far, you've only admitted to wanting sex. What should I think?"

The silence dragged on. Ten seconds, then twenty, then thirty went by with no reply from the vampire on the other end. A soft, resigned sigh whispered past the telepath's lips.

"That's what I thought," she replied with resignation coloring her tone. "Goodnight, Eric. Please don't call again."

The line disconnected, but it was some time before the vampire pocketed his phone. The conversation did not go the way he'd hoped. Not at all. An uncomfortable, tight feeling grew exponentially larger with every passing second.

He'd fucked up.

Was it too late to fix his mistake? The phone was retrieved and a number entered, but he did not press send.

Enough mistakes had been made this night.

So, do you think he really screwed up, or is there hope still?

Let me know what you think!