Chapter Thirty-One – All Too Predictable Nether Patterns

SPOV

I tried.

I tried like hell to push away the rainbows and unicorns frolicking through my mind to dig down deep to get to the nitty gritty. Analyzing every detail I could remember of Yester Eric and his reactions towards me back then. Without the use of my telepathy I only had his facial expressions, his body language, and his words to go by. Nearly all of them were inappropriate given he was my boss at the time, but aside from that they all seemed completely genuine. Not once did he ever make me feel like he wasn’t being sincere.

Like he didn’t want me.

In fact I felt how much he wanted me many times through our clothes.

But it was on that night in the hospital after I’d found Tara that sealed the deal. He didn’t have to do any of the things he’d done. For me or for her. The private room. The comfy clothes. The fancy food. Instead it was the way he had made me feel safe. The way he’d been able to take my mind off of the horrors I’d witnessed that day. The gentle way he’d been able to mute the terror I’d still felt for my friend. The aching look on his face when he was forced to leave me there before the sun rose the next day, with the chorus of Copacabana still on a loop in my brain, that made me realize now it wasn’t just about the chase for him.

It was just me.

Just like it was just me who Eric had chosen to share his blood with.

Granted, there could have been another. There could have been many others over his however long lifetime. For all I knew there could’ve been another who died on the very same night he’d shown up on highway and he just couldn’t remember them now when he couldn’t feel them anymore. But hearing him say it was just me and seeing the disgust on his face over the thought of feeling anyone else made me believe it truly was…just me.

Maybe ever.

And as odd as it was to feel so elated over the fact I’d been fed the blood of a powerful vampire, I couldn’t deny it gave me hope that maybe the old Eric was hiding more than just his fangs around me.

He cared for me too.

He must have. As angry as he was to have learned I’d duped him, he’d still given me his blood. Whatever else he felt for me was enough to override his sense of betrayal. Override his natural stinginess when it came to sharing his preternatural plasma all because he didn’t want me to die.

So did that mean he had still wanted me even then?

‘The chase’ I’d been worried about no longer held water. Even if he’d enjoyed it at the time – I knew I certainly did – I doubted it would’ve carried over when it came down to saving me.

Not from Callaghan. That could’ve been because he’d been caught up in the moment. Furious someone else was trying to take something he’d already confirmed numerous times what he thought of as his.

But he’d saved me from death.

After he’d already known I had lied to him about who I really was.

He could get a roll in the hay any and every day of the week. Sometimes more than one on any given night. I knew because I’d read the files on them all. And now that I knew about his memory whammy, I also knew why none of them ever returned.

It was because he didn’t want them too.

It corroborated his stance now that they must not have meant anything to him. And now that I knew what his whammy felt like, I also knew he’d only ever tried to use it on me twice. Once during my initial interview when he’d asked me who I worked for – I could now assume to make sure I wasn’t a spy.

My inability to be whammied had certainly saved my ass there.

And he’d tried it again on the night I’d woken in his house. The betrayee to his betrayer.

I couldn’t fault him for it either.

But those were the only times. If his only reason for wanting me was because he enjoyed the chase, then he would’ve left me to die there in that alley.

Game over.

But he didn’t.

Because he wanted me for more than that.

I’d been so worried about what would change if and when he got his memories back. But now I felt more determined than ever to fix him if only so I would know the truth. Once and for all.

Would I be getting the rose or the boot at the end of the show?

And how long would the commercial break be before we would find out?

‘It’s been so long we can consider ourselves a born again virgin. Pull over and we can give him our flower right now!’

Uh oh.

My earlier emotional upheaval had sent Betty into hiding, but now that she’d sensed the coast was clear she was trying to erode it with her crashing waves of cum.

And Eric’s flaring nostrils and shifting in his seat told me he sensed that too.

Stupid Severe Betty Alert blaring from my nether channel.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” I warned both him and Betty when his grip tightened on my hand while he slowly pulled it further up his thigh.

With his early warning Sookie sonar, I already knew the impression he would be under. Just like I knew my hand wouldn’t have to travel very far in order to reach the impression in his pants.

I could see the outline of it in my peripheral.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lover,” he offered innocently.

He was obviously feeling my good mood, given my internal revelations and the smile on his face, so his grin was expected.

The not-so-small gush in my panties seeing it was not.

His grin disappeared, replaced with an almost feral lustful expression, and the story about the small Dutch boy who saved his country from flooding by putting his finger in the leaking dike suddenly popped into my head.

‘Eric looks Scandinavian and I’ll settle for his finger! Hurry up before we all drown!’

“Lover,” he whispered hoarsely, having already guessed at my all too predictable nether patterns. “What are you thinking about?”

Wondering if my car is cum-tight?

Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I rolled down my window a little before turning to face him and adopted his earlier innocent expression as I repeated his words back to him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…lover.”

Wrong answer.

I only knew from the sound that escaped his throat. A growl like that should’ve made me duck into the backseat and go digging for one of those ancient weapons like I was Indiana Jones on a crusade.

Instead I had to force my legs and mouth shut before I ended up telling him where he could find my crystal skull.

It wasn’t like his blood in my veins hadn’t already given him a detailed map to where ‘X’ marked my spot.

While he panted in air he didn’t need – along with scent that went with it that he absolutely didn’t need – I prayed for an unexpected fart to blow by and dampen the mood in my very damp underwear. When that didn’t happen, I latched onto the first thought to cross my mind that didn’t have to do with finding out just how much room there was in the backseat and whined, “That’s so unfair. If you can feel me, then I should be able to feel you too!”

Again…it was the wrong thing to say.

“Lover,” he purred, while slowly making his upright seat horizontal. “You are free to feel any part of me any time you wish.”

Eric wasn’t the only one who had a map to go by. His body was a giant 3D raised-relief map and I could see the Northman Pole straining in his jeans below his equator.

As if I didn’t know it was dying for some relief.

I’d already taken my hand back from his in order to tether it to the steering wheel before my Betty brain could decide I was temporarily blinded by his sexiness and needed to go on a braille hunt. It helped that the highway was straight so I wouldn’t be tempted by any turns – to include the direction our conversation had taken – as I huffed out, “You know what I mean. Like your sniffer isn’t bad enough. You can feel me on the inside.”

“My fingers and tongue have,” he offered with that same damn playfully sexy lilt to his voice. ”But there is another part of me that wishes to feel inside of you as well. Feel free to explore and I’ll tell you when you’ve inserted the right one.”

‘I mean it! Hold your breath and pinch your nose because we’re about to blow!’

I swear. Between Eric and Betty it was like trying to keep up with Thing 2 and Thing 1 while a drunken Cat in the Hat fed them crack.

Chocolate covered crack.

Dipped in sprinkles.

So I did the grownup thing by pretending I was at a Weight Watcher’s meeting and he was the dessert buffet I had to resist. It was a test of my willpower.

The drool I could feel pooling in my mouth told me I was in danger of failing.

But I made myself shake it off because when all was said and done, I would have to get on that scale and I couldn’t do it buck naked.

Christ. It didn’t matter what analogies I tried to use. That fucking shit went in circles and somehow always ended up with me naked with Eric.

‘See? IN-EV-I-TA-BLE!’

While I tried to wrestle Betty into a more appropriate outfit of a ball gag and straight jacket, Eric silently watched from the dessert table. When it became clear I wouldn’t be partaking of the sinful treats he’d put on display, he straightened his seat and said in a more serious – if not hesitant – tone of voice, “There is another way for you to feel me.”

Ooohh…I don’t think so. His vampire nature wasn’t the only monster he had going for him.

That thing wasn’t getting anywhere near my ass.

Well…maybe I’d let it near my ass, but my southern port wasn’t open for his longboat to dock.

Before I could make an ass out of myself by declaring my ass off limits, he adopted a serious expression and said, “A bond.”

What does zombie Double-O Seven have to do with anything?

“If a vampire and human mutually exchange blood three times, a bond is formed,” he explained. “A permanent one. But it would allow you to sense my emotions as well.”

A permanent one?

Suddenly getting fucked in the ass didn’t sound so scary.

But talking about something that would last forever did. I wouldn’t be able to laser it away like his name tattooed on my ass if we broke up when he remembered everything. And my emotions were still being held hostage by Betty and the Things, so I couldn’t tell if that was why the thought of forever with Eric admittedly appealed to me. But I did know that it was a step I couldn’t take with this Eric.

Maybe he’d be willing to take my virgin ass as a good faith deposit?

You know…if I let him leave his deposit behind in mine?

‘Oh hell no! I’ll be damned if I don’t get christen the S.S. Northman for its maiden voyage!’

“Your emotions are confusing me,” he offered softly, while I struggled to contain an angry Betty who was threatening to cork my ass with her champagne bottle.

“You’re not the only one,” I admitted. The silence only continued to grow until I finally asked, “Is that something you would want? A bond?”

One who wasn’t a zombie who worked for MI6?

I had a feeling I already knew what his answer would be, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. And for once my assumption didn’t make an ass out of me because he immediately answered, “Yes.” And when I didn’t say anything else, after a while he added, “But you do not.”

He sounded like I’d killed his zombie spy puppy, so I knew looking over at him would do me in. He already had so much upheaval in his life that I hated adding any more to it, but I couldn’t lie to him. The whole point of our conversation stemmed from the fact he would be able to feel it, so I explained, “I don’t know how I feel. But I do know that it’s a step I couldn’t take now. Not when you don’t remember everything.”

I was working blind without my telepathy being of any use and I both hated it and loved it. I had no clue what he was thinking, but at the same time, with Eric I had never felt more normal.

He remained silent for a while, but his soft spoken voice drew my eyes back to his when he asked, “What if I never regain my memories?”

“I’m a telepath, Eric. Not a psychic,” I sighed. “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow much less what’s going to happen after that. We haven’t known each other all that long, even taking into account the time you can’t remember. It’s too soon to be talking about a permanent anything. Even the lease I signed is up in six months, but I’m willing to go as far as saying that I’d be open to revisiting the idea in the future. Barring of course I don’t get hit by a bus or something.”

That would be just my dumb luck.

“I would not let you die. I would turn you.”

Instead of saying it matter-of-factly he sounded almost mad.

As in enough to kill – in a crazy, ‘I’ll-rip-your-head-off-and-shit-down-your-throat-even-though-vampires-don’t-shit,’ kind of way – with his outrage at my hypothetical death-by-bus belying his soft tone.

It was scarier than the thought of ass fucking.

But it still made my asshole pucker. And it was also why I wasn’t thinking clearly when I decided a joke was in order to lighten the mood and offered, “If you did that, then who would feed you supper?”

I immediately regretted my words, remembering the file I now knew contained his dinner menu. But Eric chose the other route and seethed, “I would drain the bus driver who harmed you.”

Geez…tell me how you really feel.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to prolong our hypothetical death match – me versus the imaginary bus/driver – because we’d finally entered New Orleans. Instead of going straight to the casino, I detoured to the house we would be staying in, knowing I would need to change into something a little more fitting than jeans and a tee.

But not so fitting I couldn’t hide the pieces for my stint playing stake and dagger.

There weren’t any other cars in the courtyard when I pulled up in front of the house, so I assumed the landlord was out. It was just as well since I wanted to keep Eric under wraps.

Of course Betty and I had different definitions of what that meant.

‘He said we should smell like him, so get upstairs and have him spray down the womb with his can of Er-Wick air freshener!’

Maybe once we figured out a way to get Eric’s magical malady fixed we could find a coochie charm to disappear Betty.

Hearing my mental threat, she immediately began chanting and circled the womb with something that wasn’t salt, declaring my ovaries to be her enchanted gris-gris bags capable of warding off mystic muff mufflers.

There was something seriously wrong with me. But luckily for her I didn’t have the time to dwell on it.

Instead I parked near the stairs on the side of the house, leading up to the second floor where we would be staying, and went to the back of the car to grab some of our bags. Bags I ended up clutching to my chest like they were two magical gris-gris ovaries needed to fend off the sight of Eric standing beside me, with his two swords now strapped in a crisscross pattern across his back.

‘X. Marks. The. Spot! Brown chicken brown cowww…’ Betty crooned, managing to widen my stance to show him where his magic bullet could find our bullseye.

I couldn’t even disagree with her despite her bow chicka wow wow misnomer.

Not when a Google search of ‘dangerously sexy’ should come with a picture of him looking like that. And seeing him, I suddenly felt simultaneously under and overdressed.

I should be wearing a fitted bodice gown he should then rip from my body before his pulsing manhood enters my love chamber.

“See something you like, lover?” he purred.

Betty was steadily purring too. And trying to claw her way to Ericdom through my panties.

What with Eric’s purring and Betty’s clawing, I figured no one would notice if I jumped on the pussy metaphor bandwagon and acted like the cat had my tongue. Ignoring him and his poorly hidden treasure, I stumbled my way up the stairs, carrying what was left of my willpower and sanity with me. Once I opened the door with the key I’d gotten earlier that afternoon, I took our non-magical bags the rest of the way into the bedroom.

The one and only bedroom since it was a one bedroom apartment.

It didn’t surprise me Betty had failed to send out any alerts on that front earlier when I failed to think things through. Hopefully she’d get her shit together and warn me if I was in danger of pulling another asinine Callaghan confrontation. But in the meantime I could at least let myself pretend we’d be too busy at night trying to figure out the whodunit, so we’d be less likely to be getting busy in between the sheets.

The fact Betty’s voice existed at all told me I had a pretty good imagination. A smutty one, but at least I had hope I could pretend.

And hearing Peter Parker’s uncle’s voice saying, “With great power comes great responsibility,” in my head, told me I was hopefully on the right track.

‘To get railroaded by the Northman freight train! Woo! Woo!’

Or not.

I was surprised Eric wasn’t at my side already considering Betty’s own personal take on the Vagina Monologues, so I went in search of him and found him standing just outside of the open front door, seeming to study the frame.

“It’s not password protected, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I smiled, seeing him standing there looking bereft.

I’d had enough of running into that shit.

“I…” he began and then paused, before trying again. “I…I cannot enter.” My eyes automatically rolled, thinking – like my car – his hoity toity highness didn’t find our accommodations befitting his grand sense of style and penchant for dead cows. But before I could get too riled up all over again, he added, “You have to invite me in.”

While my feet continued to carry me forward, my mouth opened to ask, “Why?”

The way he’d said it didn’t lead me to believe it had anything to do with my forgotten manners. Especially since Eric couldn’t exactly throw stones on being forgetful, but I was still surprised when he explained, “There is a magical barrier barring my entry. I cannot enter a human’s home without an invitation.”

Fuuuck…

By then I was standing just on the other side of the doorway. And even though I walked through it moments earlier just fine, I still hesitantly reached through it expecting to feel something like a zap, but there was nothing. “When you say magic does that mean a witch put a whammy on this place?”

It wasn’t a question I’d ever imagined myself having to ask. It only made my once bolstered opinion on my creativity take a hit, but my rising anxiety overshadowed it. He was the magic detector in the group, so I’d have to take his word for it. And knowing I didn’t hear anything from the landlord’s mind that would make me think she wasn’t anything but a normal human didn’t make me feel any better.

Her thoughts were crazy loud. But normal.

Feeling god knows what coming from me, Eric’s expression softened as he explained, “It is a natural phenomenon. Nature’s way of protecting humans from those who are more powerful than they and who would likely hunt them to extinction otherwise.”

One would think I would feel better hearing Mother Nature had opened up her own ADT shop.

Ancient Defense Token

Instead I was pissed. With the landlord gone and no idea of when she would return, I felt panicked inside. We still had several hours until daybreak, but I didn’t like the added variable. I didn’t like the thought of Eric having no safe place to return to at the end of the night, but before my panties could become irreparably twisted, he said, “You have to issue me an invitation to enter.”

I didn’t see how that would work considering I didn’t own the house. But since I’d already come to learn there was a lot I didn’t know about magic and their impenetrable force field byproducts, I prayed he was right and whispered questioningly, “Come in Eric?”

My words brought back our matchy-matchiness because the tension in his body left town with mine right behind it seeing him walk through the door. But a different kind of tension rose up when he had me in his arms a split second later. Nuzzling his face against my neck and thereby completing the destruction of my underwear, he sighed, “I do not like not being able to reach you. Please do not rescind my invitation.”

Was that what he’d been so worried about?

I’d thought perhaps it had to do with bewitched barriers, but hearing the sadness in his voice I couldn’t find it within myself to joke about having the upper hand for once. Instead I hugged him back and tried to reassure him by promising, “I won’t.”

He was still hugging me like I was his long lost woobie and since I couldn’t offer him a cup of hot cocoa to take his troubles away, I asked, “Are you hungry?” Pushing my neck further against his lips, while I tamped down my internal this-is-a-bad-idea meter, I reminded him, “You never got around to feeding earlier.”

Never mind the fact I’d been so angry with him at the time, if I’d said, ‘Bite me,’ I wouldn’t have meant it literally.

I expected to hear the sound of his fangs snick down at my offer. I expected to feel the wall/floor/door at my back and his god given battering ram at my front. So I was taken by complete surprised when he pulled back to stare at me with a look I didn’t want to give a name to. But even clutching my ticket for a one-way trip down the river of denial, I couldn’t ignore the reverence in his voice when he said, “Thank you.”

“Why do you seem so…” I began to ask. But like the contents of my panties, my brain was mush and I couldn’t find the word I was looking for.

‘Fuckable?’ Betty offered.

“Amazed,” I countered her all too true and completely unhelpful suggestion.

‘If you’re talking about his ass, you’re right. It IS amazing!’

“Lover,” he said softly, thankfully interrupting Betty before she could get on a roll. “While I might not remember much, I can assure you it is a rarity for any human to knowingly and willingly offer to feed my kind. You are a rarity. A treasure for many reasons that should be cherished at all times, but there are no words to sufficiently describe the paragon that you are.”

I felt myself blush at his compliment, with my eyes dropping to his chin as I mumbled, “I guess you didn’t forget how to use paragon in a sentence.”

‘I’ll see your ‘paragon’ and raise you an ‘organ.’ As in Eric’s organ and I want it raised.’ Betty pushed her pile of chips to the center of the table, while she pushed at my need to take anti-psychotic medication, panting out, ‘And thrusting.’

Maybe I would benefit more from inpatient treatment? I could be on mandatory lockdown next door to LiLo.

“Why do you hide yourself from me?” Eric asked just as softly.

It’s not my fault you can’t see me behind Betty’s massive pile of poker chips. It was big enough to hide both Nessie and Big Foot from civilization.

Maybe Eric could partner up with Indiana Jones so they could find me and my Unholy Cum Trail.

Thoughts of Eric using a bullwhip only gave him more of a trail to go on, but instead of slipping his way down the Betty Brick Road, he merely tilted my chin so my eyes would meet his own. He studied my face like there would be a pop quiz later on and shook his head as though he could hear my internal dialogue. The thought alone only made my blush deepen, but it made no difference when he gently placed his lips on mine. My entire body heated up when he deepened the kiss and I no longer remembered what we were doing. Why we were there or what we still had to do.

In that moment nothing else existed except for me and Eric and our kiss.

It was why I didn’t hear anyone approaching until it was too late. The, “Hey Sookie! I see you made it okay,” was barely out of her mouth when Eric’s fangs finally made an appearance in his. His entire body became rigid and I sensed he was about to attack when I clutched him even tighter. Not because I was afraid of him hurting her, but because of what I heard from her.

Holy shit! That’s Eric Northman! I wonder if she already knew he was a vampire or if we’ll be getting glamoured together.