Disclaimer: Charlaine Harris owns all.
Rated M for several reasons.
Chpt 57 Words Just Get in the Way
SPOV
My heart has stopped.
It's not dramatic over emoting from my inner teenager.
It's actually stopped cold.
And I can't breathe . . . .
Strong hands grip my shoulders, pulling me upright and into his chest.
"Sookie." He murmurs. "Breathe."
My eyes open and the recessed lighting in here is so bright it's like daylight.
Its pitch black outside and I can see us both so clearly in the floor to ceiling glass doors that separate the kitchen from the palace gardens.
A generously endowed golden haired woman with wide blue eyes, sitting on a stool, shoulders clasped against the massive, and frankly glorious, body of a centuries old warrior who guards his heart jealously, his blonde hair partially obscuring his face as he looks down at her.
Air whooshes into my lungs and my heart stutters back to life.
I never expected . . . . was prepared for the worst . . . . would have been able to deal with a whole lot less . . . .
"Are you really mine?" I whisper.
Using his hands on my shoulder her turns the stool slowly to face him and I manage to lift my eyes slowly past the pearlescent buttons of his shirt, his throat, his mouth, until they rest on his piercing blue ones.
"You wish to have property of Sookie Stackhouse tattooed on my forehead?" He asks, raising an eyebrow and fighting a smile. "Because I was hoping to be allowed some dignity in my abject and total surrender."
"No!" I admonish quickly, planting my hand over his mouth. "No jokes. We both know that isn't what's happening here."
"Do we?" He asks, my hand muffling his quiet words.
I should answer quickly, I know, but I'm distracted by the tightness around his eyes which only I ever seem to see. This must be so much harder for him than it is for me, I've been so terrified of letting him see how complete his hold on me is that I've given him nothing but my fear and confusion, taking his strength and reassurance in return. It's time to give him something of me but it's still surprisingly difficult, despite his words and what I've been feeling in our altered bond. There's a tight ball forming in my chest and a prickly lump closing my throat, trying to stop my mouth from blurting out my own utter and irrevocable capitulation . . . .
And yet, I love him, and you don't close yourself off from the person you love, not when they love you too . . . .
"IwouldneverhaveleftEricIwoul dn'thavebeenableto." Breathe. "Ionlywanttobewithyoudon'tletmego. Please."
His lips purse, pressing a kiss against my palm and the skin around his eyes relaxes, which relaxes me, a little bit. It isn't enough, but I can't tell him I love him, even if he already knows.
"You terrify me too." I admit, dropping my hand and my eyes.
His hands slide across my shoulders and up my neck, gently, until they are cupping my head. Then he lifts it, supporting it with his thumbs under my jaw, so I have to look at him. Only fair I suppose.
"We are done with words." He declares, pinioning me with his eyes. "They make neither of us comfortable."
I open my mouth to object, I'm a woman of the Cosmo age after all, but he silences me with his mouth and his tongue. And he's right, sometimes words just get in the way.
I love the way he pulls my face to his, explores my mouth with that tongue, like he doesn't already know the topography, such long lazy circles, keeping the rest of us separated until I can actually feel the current arcing between us, the ache building inside me. How does he do that? Do I do the same to him? I'd be worried it's just physical, I crave him so much and I've seen those fears in the minds of others, but I know it isn't, the 'pull' is in our bond too, drawing other parts of us inexorably together, its alien but somehow not frightening, maybe it's even the 'magic' Niall spoke of. And as ever it chases away everything else, my modesty, my sense of self, leaving only him, the man who stole my world . . . .
My hands splay out on the object of my lusty affections, revelling in the sensation of the muscles sliding under his skin, fluttering and contracting under my touch through the silk of his shirt. Groaning into my mouth his hands circle my waist, lifting me easily onto the marble counter, kicking the stool away, pushing his body between my legs, his kiss becoming urgent, forceful enough to rock our bodies. The countertop is cold under the thin jersey of my skirt but the rest of me is on fire, thighs clenching on his, instinctively trying to pull him in, there's still so much space between us. The fairy / giant Viking dynamic isn't working in my favour though and soon I'm mewling into our kiss, trying to wrap my arms around him, longing for our bodies to be pressed together. I want, I want so bad it hurts . . . .
He releases my mouth, fastening his lips onto my neck, sucking the skin between them, tasting it with his tongue.
"Eric." I moan, my head falling back from a combination of sensory overload and a desire to let him do whatever he wants, my hands, now clutching his shoulders, and his, securing my waist, the only things preventing me from toppling backwards.
His mouth drops to my proffered chest, kissing his way down over my blouse before diverting to place open mouthed kisses on each straining nipple, leaving them painfully pinched against the wet fabric as he lavishes attention on my sternum. I arch toward him but still we aren't close enough, my whimpers as pathetic and needy as the words I struggled to speak, the ceiling above me an unfocussed expanse of white light . . . .
Footsteps in the hallway, a deep bass growl that resonates through me, footsteps retreating, his mouth slanting down over mine, one hand now in my hair, the other gripping my butt and pulling me roughly to the edge of the counter, pressing our hips and mouths together as he holds the rest of us apart.
Our bodies are rocking again, a maddening echo of I want us to be doing . . . .
My hands take matters, well, into their own hands and our bond surges with his appreciation as I burrow them between us, snapping his belt and yanking down his zipper, sliding my fingers past the moisture at his tip to wrap around him.
Now it's his head that falls back, my eyes focussed on his adam's apple as it bobs in his throat. God, there's nothing about this man that isn't sexy and my eyes dart sideways to the windows. Where a generously endowed golden haired woman is feverishly trying to get the man she loves inside her, where he belongs. Not that he's putting up much of a fight, all of a sudden . . . .
His lower hand pulls me forward until my bones are rolling almost painfully on the edge of the counter, his other hand tightening in my hair, tilting my head back and exposing my throat.
"Neeeeed . . . ." I keen. "God, Eric, please . . . . love me . . . ."
Groaning he slides through my fingers, breaching me, just barely, and stopping. My fingers, still inside his pants, curl into the skin covering his hip bones like talons, nails biting into his flesh.
"Fuck!" He spits out, the irony not lost on me.
Please, oh please, oh please . . . .
His lower hand pulls me onto him, hard and fast, his other forcing my head further back, my eyes onto the innocuous sweep of ceiling and lights, hands onto his ass.
"Mine." He growls, cool breath ticking my arched throat.
"Yours."
"Mine, mine . . . . mine . . . . mine . . . . . mine . . . ."
Each declaration punctuated with a short hard thrust and a tightening of his hands. So gonna bruise, so not bothered . . . . yours . . . .
Finally those hands bring us flush together, his shallower penetration offset by the feel on his body rubbing against my chest and the view of his tight jaw and chorded neck above me. And my desire in this moment changes, I still ache, I still want, but I realise what Eric is doing, prolonging this, our closeness without words, our connection, making it last, making it sing . . . .
My eyes close and I stop fighting him, allowing him to guide my head to rest against his shoulder, my lips pressed to his throat. Allowing myself to just feel us together . . . . and I am warm, tingling from head to toe with pleasure . . . . floating in a haze of nascent sensation . . . . dimly aware of my physical surroundings . . . . my identity . . . . myself . . . . time . . . . acutely aware of everything about him . . . . his taste . . . . his smell . . . . our smell . . . . the way he feels . . . . dragging and teasing at my flesh . . . . his fist against the back of my skull . . . . the clenched hand on my butt, rhythmically pulling and pushing us together . . . .
My orgasm, and the blinding white light that engulfs us, takes me by such surprise that I'm not even able to cry out as I come apart, clutching onto him, my tether, for dear life, barely aware of the cold seeping through the material of my blouse as he pushes me down onto the counter and begins the song again . . . .
EPOV
Eventually, satiated and sleepy, I brought her back to our room, mindful of her Great Grandfather's admonishment that she rest and recover her strength. I do not think I have exacerbated that, our bond indicates it is not so, but I am unwilling to take the risk.
I must resume my responsibilities at sunset and I should be working but it is hard to tear my eyes away from her long enough to make it happen. Also, she is snoring lightly, and I find this soft sound pricks at my protective instincts, I have a strong urge to stand at the foot of the bed with my sword lest anything attempt to disturb her.
I was honest, I have no idea what we are, but I want us to remain it. I may not understand, but I am not a coward, I will not shrink away from what is happening, no matter what consequences I can see in our future.
Our room. Our future. Is this so different from the others I assume responsibility for?
Snorting I shake my head and resume scrolling through the myriad emails that await my attention. This technology is a boon, but it also a sloppy way to manage, sterile words are no replacement for seeing someone's eyes when they give you their report, errors, omissions and lies are so much easier to spot in person.
For example, I would dearly like to know what has prompted Washington, a notoriously lazy and negligent monarch, to rouse himself from his self-absorption and demand to know why the Council convened to report on Rhodes has yet to meet. The Pope is apparently not a Catholic and bears no longer shit in the woods . . . .
SPOV
I dreamed I had wings, silver gossamer ones, they made a noise like a swarm of bees and The Rock was trying to teach me to fly. And every time I crashed back into the canvass of the ring he'd pin me until I counted out and the crowd roared their approval. I've no idea what all that was supposed to signify other than that I'd wake up to find myself being crushed by a dead weight, literally.
Once again, surely there were some small, less heavy, Vikings?
Not that I'd want one. I'm kind of partial to this one, even if he is suffocating me with his giant, hairy, armpit.
I am wide awake, as sharp as one of Gran's carving knives, and craving a little sun before it sets for the day.
Vikings are harder to dislodge than the bedclothes I usually tussle with, but eventually I manage to wriggle out from under him and take a shower.
The upper floors of the Palace are shrouded in gloom and it's not until I reach the stairs leading down into the foyer that the sunlight is allowed to flood in. The humans and weres barely acknowledge me as I make my way to the kitchen, grabbing a coffee and taking it out onto the terrace with me.
The sounds of the city are louder out here, the gardens look like a tranquil retreat but they're really just an expensive illusion. Not that any of its bothering me.
I am only ever usually this calm and relaxed sunbathing in the yard at home, when there isn't another living soul close enough to bother my disability. This is the first time I've really noticed how profoundly it has altered, in all the other turmoil the true control over it I have always longed for arrived without me being consciously aware of it. I can switch it on and off at will, no scrabbling around for my shields, but I don't really even need them anymore, it kind of runs in the background like CCTV footage, I can watch it or ignore it, pause or rewind it.
Of course that realisation isn't the only reason I'm relaxed and happy. I might not have a label for what Eric and I are but inside, where it matters, my insecurities have packed away their placards and slinked off into the furthest corners of my mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm still hopelessly in love with a vampire and I'm not naïve enough to believe that's going to be plain sailing, I'm just comfortable enough for now that I don't need to dwell on it. Thanks to Eric.
I've even seem to have accepted that selfish, dangerous, sensible, or not, with him is where I belong.
Which means I need to take a trip home, sometime, soon.