Chapter 18: I know

SPOV

The reconstruction was quite something. Eerie…but effective. And a little embarrassing by the way I clutched that huge sword and tried defending myself with it, when I couldn’t even lift it properly. I mean, who the hell fooled with prehistoric giant swords like that anymore?

Guess I already know!

Somehow the mental visual of Eric, holding that sword, doing whatever warrior things he did, made me a little hot and bothered. Pam gave me a look and I quickly squashed down any more arousing feelings, lest my smell became more attractive to her, more than it already was.

I finally got the identity of the crazy snarly brain from last night and was rightfully pissed at him all over again. Oh I would be seeing him, for sure. He would be paying for scaring the bejesus outta me and tackling me like he did!

Moving on…

After the spell was done, Pam fiddled with her phone for a bit, no doubt texting Eric, and offered to take me back to anywhere but the convention center. Going by the looks she was sharing with the younger of the two witches, Amelia, I was sure she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible and get on with more pleasurable pursuits. Amelia looked to be sending away the older witch, Octavia, too. Octavia shook her head knowingly, nodded once at Pam and turned to me.

“Miss Stackhouse. It was a pleasure meeting you. I’d like to catch up with you some other time if you would be open to it?”

Huh?

“Ummm…sure?”

“Excellent”, she smiled kindly, “here is my card with my contact information. Call me up whenever you wish to meet.” She handed me her card and I took it, still mystified as to why she would want to specifically meet me outside of her work situation.

“Thank you Ms. Fant. It was nice meeting you. And thanks again, for helping out with the spell an’ all.”

She just waived her hand. “Oh don’t mention that. It is a part of my job. You have a good evening now.” She glanced at all three of us, gave a pointed stare to Amelia who smiled sheepishly in return and left us in the corridor.

Pam was giving me pointed stares too.

“You sure are in a rush to get rid of me Pam!”

She smirked and ran her gaze up and down my body, “Oh believe me little fairy, if you weren’t Eric’s, I would never ever let you out of my sight.”

Amelia frowned and I caught a little resentment coming from her. Oh I could seriously do without her jealousy. Pam was sooo not my type. I rolled my eyes at Pam and sighed, “Not that weirdness again, Pam! You guys go ahead and do whatever you were planning on doing. I am sure I’ll find my way to Eric, or granddaddy Niall.”

“Not happening, princess! I need to escort you to an Eric approved safe place or… you are welcome to join us” she answered without a pause, the last part, of course, punctuated with a leer.

Ugghh! I hated being babysat!

But I didn’t want to return to the guard room. The guards were all growly red swirls and were giving me a headache. I was tired. I needed rest. And I needed my vampire.

“Can you take me to Eric?”

“No, not yet! He would be on stage anyways. You will be safest in the control room.”

“Is there any other place, more private, where I would be safe”, I drew air quotes, “and can get some peace and rest too?”

Pam rolled her eyes. “Well, aren’t we a little whiny this evening! Trust Eric to leave me on toddler duty while he gets to have all the fun!”

I huffed and kept quiet. She huffed too, and whipped her phone and began typing furiously. Whatever conversation was happening, Pam sure looked shocked with it. Her eyes alternated between boring holes into her poor phone’s screen and boring holes into me for a complete minute. Finally she shrugged and started clacking her overly prized heels away from us.

“You owe me Tinkerbell! Now come along humans. Keep up! I haven’t got all night.”

Amelia bounced along first, giggling at me. I sent away a healthy dose of frustration to my high handed vampire/babysitter and trudged along.

Wherever I was expecting to be put up for the night, this was surely not I would have come up with. After safely depositing a waiting Amelia to a sitting room, Pam took me higher up in the building, taking an elevator, which was straight from a Men in Black movie, complete with retina and fingerprint scans. We stepped into a silent, elegant foyer, and Pam took a left, towards a huge ornate rosewood door. She touched a round piece of metal carving near the door knob and an electronic panel popped out of the wall beside the door. She again scanned her eye and her fingertips. A smaller, clear screen, looking very much like an iphone, folded out from the main panel. Pam pricked her index finger on her fang and dragged the small drop of blood on the screen, maybe drawing some kind of a pattern on it.

Yeah no, that wasn’t an iphone!

Whatever happened to good ole keypads with keys and security codes! 

Either I hadn’t noticed the locks last night when I visited Tara, or I was being taken to Area 51. However, I am quite sure I hadn’t set foot in this foyer before tonight.

The small screen lit up and then the not-an-iphone went neatly back inside the electronic panel. The panel folded itself up into the wall again and the door opened into a private sitting room.

It was a study in contrasts. Bright colored upholstery interspersed with neutrals, straight manly lines but cozy contours, everything modern and yet clearly reminiscent of the Viking warrior under the powerful vampire-king skin. It was fascinating.

I was still observing everything around, when Pam suddenly appeared in front of me. “Make sure you don’t leave this place. Eric will be here once his work for the evening is done, in around an hour or so. I’ll bring you some human food and drink.”

“Thanks Pam. I’d really appreciate that.”

“And princess…” she came close to my face and narrowed her eyes, “this is my maker’s day chamber, a place open to no one but him and those with his blood. Try anything funny and folks out here won’t remember you were even born!”

Jeez!

I mock raised my hands in the air, “I’ll be good!”

She zoomed out and as the thick door clicked shut, I was suddenly alone in the vast suite. It was silent as a grave, very befitting to the vampire who lived there. I rolled my eyes at my poor joke and moved to sit in the very comfortable looking suede couch in front of an unlit fire place. The entertainment system (it would be a crime to call it a mere TV, video player and speakers) looked intimidating and I decided not to fool with it. A book sat on the coffee table, the bookmark peeking through the middle. I picked it up. Shogun – by James Clavell. It had a silhouette of a warrior brandishing two swords on the cover. I guess it was not like the usual romance or mystery stuff I picked up from the Bon Temps library. However, it would divert my mind and calm me down a bit. I quickly got rid of my painful heels, folded my legs comfortably, and settled deep in the corner of the couch to start reading.

The diversion ploy worked.

I must have dozed off at some point… because I suddenly awoke to a gentle tickling sensation on my neck. My hands involuntarily moved to investigate the source and landed in a mass of silky soft hair. I smiled and tugged at his hair. Eric had me curled up like a child in his lap, had a fire going in the fireplace, and was currently, very contentedly, nuzzling my hair and neck. My hair pulling was rewarded with a groan and a blunt bite on my shoulder.

“Eric…” I sighed.

I was finally alone with Eric. It had been a while since I had been alone with him like this. The realization made me tingle all over.

He nibbled on my collarbone and took a long sniff of it. It would have felt creepy if that was anyone else doing it. But with Eric, it just fanned the desire I had had for him all day.

“I like you on my couch.” He whispered as his nose skimmed the sensitive skin under my ear and he kissed my earlobe

I shivered.

“I like that you were reading the book I am reading…” he dragged his lips along my jaw and kissed my chin, “I like waking you…”

His capable fingers were slowly massaging my back and the side of my head, while he slowly moved to kiss along the other side of my jaw. I tried pulling his face towards me, to kiss him properly. He chuckled and took hold of my hands, holding them securely in my lap.

“Don’t rush me tonight…” His voice was pure silk, thick with desire. He leaned back and took my face in his big hands, threading his fingers in my hair. His eyes… those beautiful blue green swirls of fire, filled with so much emotion, so much intensity, knocked the breath out of me. He looked at me like I was his last breath and he never wanted to let go. He had always had a way of speaking to me with his eyes. And tonight, he was being especially eloquent with them. It was almost as if I was being glamoured.

I took hold of his shirt collar to pull him closer, “So are you just going to stare hungrily at me all night?” I sassed.

His lips quirked into a smile, “I can do that…” His eyes roamed across my face, as if cataloguing each and every inch and pore, and then the smile dissolved. A hint of vulnerability entered his eyes.

“I’ve waited to do that…to sit you up close and front and just, look at you, for once, and not in a hurry…to have all the time…to spend it all on you, with you…We never…I never got the chance. You have been my little ray of sunshine, my personal slice of Valhalla, since I first saw you in Fangtasia, though I didn’t know it back then…Right now, I can’t choose whether to just keep looking at you or to drown myself in your body, your scent, and worship you with all I’ve got…”

Holy. Mother. Of. God!

Eric Northman said this! This was Eric Northman talking! He was supposedly heartless. People called him soulless. In his own words, he was incapable of understanding love. And yet, right then, he just said the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. Hell! It was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot.

I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there and gaped at him, hopelessly fishing my brain for an appropriate response. I guess he finally broke me! What do you say to a thousand year old vampire king who just professed his deepest emotions in words like those? This was so out of his character. And I could not even begin to decipher the multitude of feelings coming in through our bond.

My musing was interrupted by his special smile. “You’re overwhelmed…”

I nodded.

He cocked an eyebrow and bit his tongue, which was peeking out of his lips, “Too much?”

I shook my head, “No. It’s not that. You…”… how to say this, “I’ve never heard things like that, spoken to me of all the people!”

His eyes darkened, “You’ve been with fools.”

Suddenly, I could not meet his eyes. I bowed my head. I just couldn’t shift all blame to the others. I had to take responsibility for all of that too. I owed it to me. And I owed it to him.

“I’ve been a fool too, Eric… more times than I care to remember!” Would the ghosts of my past ever stop haunting me?

“You were naïve Sookie. Naïve and reckless and a hopeless romantic. But never a fool!”

He kissed the top of my head and held me in a tight hug. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him back. I felt so much comfort in that act. Trust Eric to know I needed that hug right then.

“You were not prepared for this world of ours. It’s vicious! And it was thrown at you in the most painful ways. You just did what you had to, to survive. Do not berate yourself for crimes committed by others.” I felt exasperation and a little anger coming from him.

“Why are you so good to me?”

“Oh! So now we are fishing for compliments?!” He said in mock exasperation, but I knew he was smirking.

“A girl can try! You just happen to have a pretty way with words, Mr. Northman.” I grinned, “Plus inside the cold hard Viking, you are a secret mushball!”

His chest shook with suppressed laughter “What’s a mushball Sookie?”

I dislodged myself from his iron grip and crawled on top to straddle him. My dress bunched up around my thighs. His hands immediately found the nooks in my waist and my hands went to caress his smooth cheeks.

“Oh, you know…sweet, romantic, corny, cutie-pie…” I giggled at his horrified expression.

“I. am. Not. A. Cutie-pie! Whatever that is!”

That just made the giggling go worse. I just clutched at stomach and laughed at his pout. He really looked cute with that pout.

“Alright that’s it! Time to cut the cute out” he stood up and hoisted me on his shoulder, slapping my butt in the process. I squealed in surprise and he zoomed us to another room. His bedroom, by the looks of it. My butt landed on the huge giant-friendly bed and suddenly he was on top of me, pinning my arms and legs with his weight. There was no way I could have moved under that amount of dead weight.

Yeah pun intended!

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try. And I did have a few tricks up my sleeve. My hands started glowing a bit, and I prepared to give him a little zap. Not to hurt him of course. Just to remind him that if he went all Viking on me, I was not going to be the damsel in distress. In fact, I knew if I put up a mock fight, it would just excite him some more. Maybe that’s what I was going for…

He must have noticed my hands.

“Oh no you won’t, little fairy!”

His eyes became feral, the speckles of blue and green in them distracted me from shoring up my light, just for the moment he needed. His lips crashed on mine. And then I was lost!

For all the caveman antiques he pulled and contrary to his pinning grip on me, his lips caressed me tenderly, like he was getting reacquainted with mine. Tasting and nibbling. Teasing…

He kissed me slowly, languidly, as if we had eternity and all we had to do was kiss each other.

Then it became more.

He sucked on my lower lip and gently bit, not enough to draw blood, but enough to maybe leave a swelling or a mark in its wake. Before I could return the gesture, he moved to place light kisses along my jaw, then my neck and then lower on my collarbones. He let go of my hands for a second, and before I could react, took hold of the neckline of my dress and ripped it clean apart, till the last seams on the base.

“ERIC!”

And he had pinned my arms again!

“I loved that dress!” I gasped.

“Mmmm…” he was nibbling at the tops of my breasts, “I loved it too…” he mumbled, not stopping his maddeningly tender assault on my already burning flesh. His fangs snuck out and he nicked the puny scrap of material holding my bra together in the middle, and my uh, ample assets, came loose with a flourish.

Fangs were efficient!

Eric groaned and licked my nipples, blowing cool air on them to pucker them up even more than they were already puckered. He did this with every inch of exposed flesh he could get his mouth on, and he could get his mouth to a lot of places, taking his sweet time with every spot.  His extended fangs tickled and aroused me. But he did not bite.

He went lower, still not letting go of my hands, although by then I was aware of nothing but his mouth doing delicious things to me. He nuzzled my navel and bit the flimsy material of my panties.

Oh well!! If they were to go to dead-panty-land, what better way to go!

“Look at me lover…”

That’s when I realized that he was no longer on top of me. He was way down, between my legs, smiling lasciviously.

I propped myself on my elbows. Not breaking eye contact, he lowered his mouth and gave me a kiss on the top of my mound. He traced his lips lower and kissed my already sensitive nub. The tip of his tongue trailed the outer edges of my dripping core, collecting the moisture seeping out, and he growled in appreciation. His tongue dipped inside and circled my clit, before his mouth closed on it and he sucked.

Ahhh… sweet sweet sensation!

He parted the lips with his thumbs and dived in, licking, nibbling, sucking, driving me crazy. He drew torturous circles around my swollen nub, with just the right pressure and put half of his long thick finger inside me, feeling up for my sweet spot. He knew it when he found it. Because I yelped in pleasure. Then he didn’t let go of it…My muscles began to tighten and my hips started moving involuntarily with his talented mouth. Just when I was about to reach the peak, he removed his finger, broke his pace and started licking me lazily.

He wound me down a bit and then, again, started on the same maddening path to glory.

And stopped again! Just when I was about to orgasm!

Oh for the love of God!

He was still looking at me, eye twinkling with mischief, fangs out. I just glared back!

“Well…Aren’t you sweet!” he smirked. He meant my taste this time.

“Erriiiiccc! Please….”

Another lick!

“Mmmmm mmmm…please what?”

“Stop playing you crazy Viking and make love to me!”

“Tired of waiting my Sookie?”

That was it!

I sat up and zapped him with some low intensity fairy microwaves. He was pushed off me and landed on his back, still on the bed. Did I tell you it was a giant bed?

Eric growled, the actual predatory thing this time and lunged for me. I zapped him again!

“You are wearing too many clothes your highness!”

And pooof… The clothes were gone at vampire speed!

Oh woww!

My entire body jumped a few degrees at the spectacular sight in front of me. Right there, kneeling in front of me, a dark fire burning in his eyes, hands twitching to touch me, he was so devastatingly beautiful that my breath hitched and I lost focus of my light. I just looked at him. And I understood what Eric had been talking about, back on the couch, about wanting to just look at me.

I wanted that too. I could spend hours looking at him. And it would never be enough.

We inched towards each other. I don’t know who was the first one to lean in, but suddenly we were kissing again… Deeply, passionately, with agonizing desperation. He grabbed me by my waist and pulled me on top of him. I grabbed his hair and pulled his head back to look in his eyes, while I slowly impaled myself on him. As I lowered, his mouth opened a little, exposing his fangs. I leaned in and licked them.

Eric groaned and lifted me an inch, before pushing me roughly down on himself, going all the way in this time.

I must have been on the verge because my orgasm exploded out of nowhere and I screamed.

He held me, still feeling like jelly after my release, a little above him and started an incredible rhythm of thrusting into me from below. He was not going all the way in but his tip was again hitting my pleasure spot with each strong stroke. I never stopped screaming. It felt like the longest orgasm of my life.

He flipped us in the middle of my second release, held up both of my legs in one of his large hands, and entered my quivering core again, this time making it excruciatingly slow and deep. He was filling me up to the point of painfulness. But the sensation was exquisite. My body started tingling again and I knew I wouldn’t last long.

“Errriiicccc…Bite me…please…”

He let go of my legs and pulled me on top of him, so that his mouth was level with my breasts. He sucked hard on my nipple and just when I knew I couldn’t take it anymore, he bit…My blood poured into his mouth, and Eric tightened his arms around me in a death grip as he came. I have no idea whether it was his fangs in me, or his gracious plenty filling me to the breaking point, or his groans of appreciation that did me in. But my body shook violently as my orgasm followed right after his.

He took a few unhurried sips, prolonging both our pleasures, and licked the wounds close.

This time when his eyes met mine, his were chock full of adoration, love and gratitude. He was still hard inside me. The legendry stamina and all! He kissed me tenderly and whispered, “I am never letting you go. You know that right?”

I snorted.

Of course he wasn’t! Of course I knew!

“I know.”

“Good! Because I am not done with you.” He kissed me again and grabbed my chin roughly to make me look at him, “I’ll never be done with you.”