A/N: A lot of you raised a very good question, "Why would Eric still want Sookie?" The answer is simple, you can't help who you love. It doesn't change because they hurt you, it doesn't change even if they don't love you back. More than a few of us have lived it and being a big bad vampire doesn't make you the exception to the rule. I mean if you could just flip a switch then there wouldn't be so many songs about love and heartache.

Sookie

Chapter Twenty-One

All week I watched Eric waiting to find a crimp in his routine. I might as well be waiting for the sands of time to run out. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with something. The cluviel dor! I'd all but forgotten about it. It could kill him for me! I wasn't sure if it would work and I needed to be. If nothing else, I knew I would only get one stab at him and it needed to be lethal.

I called Claudine's club but it wasn't her I was after.

"What?" asked came an annoyed huff.

I didn't thank God because I was conspiring to commit murder, but I thanked my lucky stars that for once I got what I was looking for. Claudine handled me with kiddie gloves. I knew she would help me as long as it went hand in hand with what Niall wanted. She was charged with minimizing Dermot's and my, 'Destructive ways' Hence why he was sentenced to Hooligans and she checked on me weekly.

"Hey, I was looking for you." I said to Dermot. He'd said we were alike and I hoped like hell it was true. I needed him to know what I was asking without having to really say it.

"For something fun and mischievous?" he asked hopefully. "If I see Claude's ass one more time I think I'll be sick."

"Well not really," I said. He gave a long agonized moan which I ignored. "I wanted to use that gift card you gave me but I don't know how." I continued after his theatrics.

"It's was a gift of the deepest love, it's supposed to give you what you ask; it's non-refundable, non-transferable, and good only for a one-time purchase."

"I could buy enough food to end world hunger if I wanted or even buy all the weapons in the world and create world peace?"

"No, it has to be spent on something dear to you because it was for you that it was bought. You can't buy world peace because you don't know everyone in the world; same can be said for world hunger."

"If I can't buy peace, what if I use it to pay for soldiers of peace? They could make evil people go away."

By the length of his pause, I knew he understood exactly what, if not whom, I was talking about.

"Let me tell you a story. Once there was a craftsman who owned a magic ax. The ax cut down trees in a single stroke, carved paths in mountains and sliced through stone to forge fortresses."

The tale and how it applied to me was easy enough to follow. The ax was the cluviel dor and I was the craftsman, not ideal but understandable.

When Dermot continued his brogue was tingeing his words, pulling me deeper into the tale. "He could have been rich but he only used the ax to provide for those dearest to his heart. When he died, he bestowed the ax upon his eldest son whom he so loved. The boy was ambitious. Why use this ax for trees and remain a simple craftsman when I can cut down an entire army and be king?' he wondered."

I was clutching the phone in one hand and the magical little stone in the other. I could feel the pulse of it in my anticipation. This could be it. I could be a single wish away from freeing Quinn and me from Eric. I could be a wish away from a happily ever after.

"What happened?" I asked breathlessly. "Did it work? Did he do it?"

"He tainted the spirit in which the ax was forged and under which it was given," he told me. "The ax cut his head off instead." Then he hung up.

I sat there with the dial tone ringing in my ear, and my hand running reflexively around my neck. I had nothing. I was right back where I started. God, it was like I would never be free of him. The army of daemons kept him safe during the day. He was a lethal predator at night. I had a magical wish-granting item but I couldn't use it to kill.

Frustrated, I tossed the stone across the room and collapsed on my bed. I was trapped. I felt like crying. I felt like screaming. I wanted to run away but there was no place in this world of another other that would keep me from Eric's reach. Forcing my tears back I rose from the bed. I wouldn't give up.

There had to be some other way and I would find it. I just had to think. Then it came to me. Sex and seduction, I could use them as weapons. I would do anything to get close enough to end him. The made me nauseous but I pacified my remaining moral fibers with the fact that it was going to happen anyway.

Eric was my husband, and at some point he was expecting sex, even before I'd agreed to share his bed or promised him a child. This way it would be on my terms and I would have the control. I started that night. Since he was insisting that we dine together. Lately he even tried to talk and ask me about my day. As if his spies didn't tell him everything I did. Still I played his game but I added my own twist.

I stuck to physical cues through out that week. I wore tighter jeans and tops, shorter skirts and dresses. I wore my hair away from my neck because I'd heard vampires like that sort of thing. I even went braless once or twice when the top garment called for it. Seducing a thousand-year-old vampire was as big a task as killing him because so far he was missing every hint. Seduction was out. Eric wasn't the least bit into me. I would probably have an easier time seducing the wall.

"Mr. Northman can't join you for dinner," Abigail said to me the the following Wednesday.

"Thanks," I replied.

That was a relief. I needed a night off from failure anyway. I ate alone and tried to think. By midnight I'd come up with nothing and tense as I was I knew sleep wouldn't come. I headed for the pool though I couldn't really swim. I more or less did water aerobics. Exhausting my body was the only way avoid nightmares these days.

Being submerged in water didn't appeal to me. I felt like I was suffocating the moment I set foot in it, and that was why I did it so often now. It reminded me of the pain I felt inside even though it didn't show on the outside. It wasn't a good healing technique but I didn't want to heal. I wanted revenge.

It wasn't until my muscles were threatening to cramp did I leave the pool. I was heading back into my room when I saw him. Eric was leaning against the wall in the hallway as if he had always been there. Despite my best efforts his presence startled me. It left me frozen on the path to my bedroom. He looked as disheveled as I thought possible for him. It wasn't a far fall from his array of suits. He was just sans the tie and suit jacket.

"Hello," he said cordially.

"Hi," I replied.

"How was your swim?" he asked.

"I don't really swim," I said. "I float."

"Why is that?" he wondered.

I shrugged. "When I was a kid, my brother thought throwing me in the lake would teach me. I nearly drowned."

"You could hire a proper instructor now," he suggested. "With your Shadow Wraiths you would be safe while you learn."

I looked around myself. "I have never seen them," I said. "Are they invisible?"

He shook his head. "You have never called them,"

"Oh," was my sophisticated reply.

I waited, though he didn't say anything else but he was looking at me kind of funny. This was my opportunity to say something enticing. I've seen what women did to tempt men they wanted for whatever reason. Nothing I'd learned from their minds seemed suitable to tempt this vampire. So I nodded in acknowledgement and turned my back to him. I would go to my room and maybe brush up on my womanly wiles. I sighed. That was why this wasn't working. I didn't know half of what I was doing, and I hated him.

"Wait," Eric called after me.

I stopped and took my time turning to face him again. I was more curious than scared as he approached me.

"I want you," he said.

~oooooo~

With that admission, the look in his eyes changed so quickly it was like a switch being flipped. There was a certain hunger to the way he looked at me. He wanted sex. This is the opportunity I'd been waiting for and my heart sank at the prospect of what I had to do. I couldn't have it both ways. I simply couldn't let my heart work. I would double over and fall apart. Steeling my nerves, I held my hand out to him. He looked down at it, then at me, and closed the distance between us.

He nuzzled my neck and his hands caressed my arms and brought me flush against his rock hard frame. I couldn't do it, not with the air of gentleness he was putting on. I cupped his face and kissed him for all I was worth. Momentarily he stilled and then he crushed me to him. His lips were no longer testing and tasting. They were demanding and the brush of his tongue against mine was urgent.

I hadn't felt my feet move, but before I knew it my head was resting a cloud soft pillow. This wasn't my bed. We were in his room, a place I never set foot in before. I didn't let myself think about that now. I was on Eric's bed, kissing him just as deeply as he was kissing me. My fingers were wound around his neck and running through his hair. His hands were touching me in caresses that heated and inflamed my body's need. I learned right then that there was a difference between having sex and making love.

With Quinn I'd done both. This was nothing like that. I was just going to let Eric fuck me. The fact that it was happening now, after all that had happened meant there was no way I could ever be blinded by the physical act. I could never see anything more in him. He pulled away and looked down at me. His fingers were tracing the curve of my face in a touch that was barely there.

"If you want me to stop I will," he said. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Damn him to hell and back, I thought. Once my head touched his pillows I thought I was at the point of no return. Taking an out hadn't occurred to me. His words, despite their prevaricatory nature, had broken through the cold wall I'd cloaked myself in to help me get through this act. Having him offer it shook my focus.

Those words sounded almost considerate. Had I not known better I would have really thought he cared. I would have perceived the softness to his tone to be real. I knew it wasn't. I'd witnessed the extent of his caring and mercy. I knew they were nonexistent. I could never see him as anything other than a monster. This pretense went no deeper than my body and the pleasure he could get from it. I couldn't tell him I wanted him because he would see the lie. I said nothing. I wound my fingers in his hair and brought his lips back to mine.

Eric returned willingly to my embrace. They moved down my body while his fingers continued to ignite my flames. He liked my breasts. He teased, tasted, and nipped at the buds of each mound in an almost reverent manner. His fingers felt good on my body but I hid their effects as best as I could. Even when he nibbled at my hip bone and my back arched involuntarily in response I didn't let myself cry out like I wanted to. I fought it.

I thought the worst of it had been over and he would simply take me, but he did something Quinn had never done. His lips slid to the inside of my thighs and found the apex of my sex. He kissed my clit and my whole frame shuddered. I could no longer stand looking at him. I'd stalked and tempted the beast but I couldn't handle it once it was off its leash entirely.

I needed something to pull me away from me, him, us, this... I needed something that would make it less consuming. The part of me he had destroyed rose to the rescue. I looked through him and saw my end goal. I gave in to the desires of the vampire looming over me. My eyes closed and I was imagining a warmer body. I was wrapped in a deep woody scent and different color eyes. I saw Quinn's face and my body relaxed more.

I thought I enjoyed sex before. I'd pleasured myself before, who hasn't? This was the first time I was experiencing an orgasm while having sex with someone else. This was in a league all its own. Eric sucked my clit deep into his mouth and caressed a deep secret place inside me with his fingers.

I fell then, into a place where my body ruled supreme. My past sexual exploit had an abundance of emotion which this lacked. Sex with Eric was the best I'd ever had. He wasn't even inside me, but the effects of his lips alone were earth shattering. Pleasure and passion of this magnitude was not something most women experienced.

"Tell me you want me," Eric said with his face over mine.

"I…" God, I could barely form a coherent thought, "want…you."

It wasn't a lie because my body did want him. It was my heart and mind that abhorred his every non-breathing moment. That aversion must not have shown because he leaned in and kissed me all the same. I didn't get the chance to register the taste of my own juices on his lips before I felt him pushing into me.

I cried out at the sheer size of his cock, but the noise was lost in his mouth. I was expecting this to be over quickly. I wanted it to be nothing more than him gaining pleasure from my body but it wasn't. Eric continued thrusting his hips, plunging his thick hard length in and out of me in a rhythm that was deep and hypnotic.

I didn't know how long he had been inside me, soon too soon I was fighting him all over again, trying to stave off another orgasm. I'd fought everything he had done to me since the day I met him. I'd fought his controlling air with defiance. I'd met his cool aloof manner with white hot anger. Oh, but I couldn't fight this. God knew I how hard I tried, but it became too much. In truth I expected him to be rough and cold. I'd expected pain. I'd expected to hate every minute of it but I couldn't he was too skilled.

There was no more refuting the raw physical assault with the profound hate. His body drove mine to heights that I've never experienced. The hold I placed over my body crumbled and I climaxed again. I hated him for it, but I hated myself more for enjoying it. It felt like I was falling apart at the seams, as if the world was crumbling to dust and when it reformed it was centered at the apex of my sex.

I was half out of my mind with the internal struggle, but he didn't slow. He continued his conquest and there was nothing I could do. Bullshit. I knew it was all bullshit. If only for these few moments where he pleasured it, my body didn't care who he was or what he'd done. It simply craved his expertise with a voraciousness I didn't know was possible.

In my head I knew all this was nothing more than a physiological response that he was able to draw from me because of his experience. Mentally that truth held fast but physically, I was gone. I'd lost all control since before he entered me. My body now belonged to him. Every push and pull of his thick length and powerful, talented hips gave him more of me to control. He was hitting places that had been unknown to me until his thorough possession.

I was hoarse from screaming. My body was sweaty and exhausted. Eric showed no signs of the same wear. Over my head, both my hands were intertwined in one of his. I was at his mercy and I wanted that to be a symbol of my life, but I could no longer think with anything more than my corporal being. It was then that his hands reached between us and flicked against a sweet bundle of nerves.

With a wordless cry I was thrown head long into heaven. It might have been hell. I didn't know. I didn't care. All I knew was that my body was burning and I was dying.

"Hush lover," he murmured, kissing me at the base of my ear, even that feather light caress added fuel to my raging release. "It's only a little death. Let it take you."

So I did. It seemed to last forever. Eric's fingers were fisted in my hair. His face was buried in the crook of my neck, but he didn't bite like I thought he would. His frame rode mine with greater insistence hitting that deep secret place harder and harder.

"Ohmigod," I cried out. "Don't...stop,"

I knew he was close too but he took me over the gates one more time or maybe my last orgasm never ended. I didn't know anymore. With a wordless shout I felt him shudder. Feeling him spurting inside me and filling me with his seed added to my pleasure. Until that point I'd been devout about condoms. I didn't know what it felt like to have a man come inside you. It was erotic and primal and bawdy and I was ashamed that I couldn't bite back a slight moan at the pleasure of it.

After Eric had wrung out the last drop of pleasure from me, and left me whimpering and trembling from aftershocks, he wrapped himself around me. I wasn't sure what to do at that point. I felt like crying but I fought it. Luckily for me, I didn't have long to struggle. Between the pool and the sex, I was exhausted and sore. I faded into unconsciousness.

"Oow," I whimpered sitting up.

For a moment I was disoriented. Then it all came back. This was Eric's room and I was in his bed. I'd had sex with him. It was necessary to get closer. It worked because I'd slept in his room last night. The first thing I did was soak in a bath, and tried to get the feel and scent of him off my body. I found that I'd gained some ground mentally. Since I heard that vampires could have sex I'd been dreading it. But the worst was over. There was nothing more to be afraid of, nothing more to lose.

I didn't see or hear from Eric for a three days. I never wanted to see him again, but as his absence didn't serve my ultimate goal. I had his direct line and I could call under some pretense of another. But lying was risky. Maybe I'd been a disappointment in bed and he didn't want a repeat. That was possible. All the things I knew about sex could fit in the palm of my hand. Preoccupied as I was with my thoughts and trying to blow my hair dry, I wouldn't have noticed him if not for the permeating void of his mind.

I made a noise of utter cowardice—something between an eep and a scream. "Jesus!" I exclaimed, throwing my hand over my heart. "Someone should hang a bell around your neck!"

Eric's lips curved into an almost undetectable secret kind of smile. "It would not serve the intended purpose," he said.

"That's just because you don't want it to," I said, not breaking the staring contest he had initiated. "You like sneaking up on me."

"I enjoy that amongst other things," was his vague reply.

His eyes didn't really look at me. It was more like they dissected and delved underneath. I was draped in a skimpy towel and I was fresh from a shower. It didn't take a telepath to know he was thinking sex. My body tingled with the memory. There was no fight this time to keep my heart from breaking. I was already in pieces. I knew I was to blame for tainting the last vestige of what was left of the person I'd been but I didn't care. I wanted revenge and this was how I would get it.

"I want you again," he said, with his eyes still raking over my body.

He was waiting for permission so I dropped my towel, and held out a steady hand in invitation. "Come here," I whispered softly.