Detox: Chapter 5

Charlaine Harris owns almost everything. I own the rest.

GabbieAnnie and I had fun brainstorming. This is the outcome of weeks of messages. Enjoy! All mistakes are my own.

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Chapter 5

Eric’s POV

The first thing Eric noticed was her scent: sweet and warm, surrounding him. The second thing was her hot body on top of his. He blinked his eyes open and was greeted by Sookie’s breasts, jostling back and forth with each movement she made; her hard nipples visible through the thin material of her top. He needed to thank Pam for Sookie’s new clothes.

She slid her hand down the front of his leg, and his body responded. His dick hardened immediately.

What is she doing? Fuck, I don’t care. A little to the left.

As if she could read his mind, her fingers danced to the left, bumping against his straining erection. Her hand froze. Even in the dark he could see her skin flush.

“What are you doing?” he asked through clenched teeth.

She gasped and tried to get away from him, but he stopped her, clamping his hands onto her hips. “I… I…” she stammered. “I was just…” Her blonde hair floated around her face like a halo.

“Trying to give me a hand job?” he offered, smiling.

She smacked at his hands and scoffed. “No!” She twisted free and pushed away from him, fumbling as she tried to escape, putting her hot hands all over his chest as she got up.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said.

Her feet hit the ground and she put her hands on her hips. “I’m not that kind of girl!”

“It sure felt like it.” He laughed. “Imagine my delight. Waking to your body pressed to mine.” He stepped out of his coffin and stretched, bumping the ceiling with his hands.

She grunted in frustration and walked out of his room, but before she could get too far, he had her pinned against the wall in the hallway, his fingers digging into her soft shoulders. Her ragged breath warmed his chest.

From where he stood, he could see down her slip of a shirt again, a sight he would never tire of. Her golden skin tinged with pink.

“Let me go.” She glared at him and put her hands on top of his, trying to pry his fingers loose.

“Why? So you can steal my keys and escape?”

Her eyes went wide. “How did you…?”

“I didn’t really think you were trying to pleasure me. I can always hope … but it doesn’t make sense. Trying to escape does.” He looked at her and watched her guilt slip into place on her face, replacing her anger. Her shoulders slumped and he relaxed his grip. “You said you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

She looked down. “I lied.”

“I’m not here to hurt you, Sookie. I’m here to help you.”

“You call handcuffing me to a bed helping me?” she shouted, her anger coming back in a flash.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Let me go! I want to go home.” Her voice echoed around them.

“Too bad!” he growled.

“You’re a… a jerk!” she yelled.

“Is that the best you can do? Go on, get it out. Tell me what you think of me!”

“I hate it here. It smells bad. It’s dirty. I have absolutely no privacy. I can’t even pee without you listening. You tell me what to do. Those stupid handcuffs hurt my wrist. I can’t sleep comfortably with one hand over my head. That spell was painful. You’re a jerk and you’re hurting my shoulders!” she finished.

He released his grip and noticed the white indents in her shoulders where his fingers had been. “I’m sorry. For everything. I don’t like it here either, but I don’t have any other options. We’re both stuck here, so you might as well get used to the idea.”

She pushed past him and stalked into the kitchen, her furry pink slippers slapping against the ground. When he joined her, he found her bent over, looking through the sparsely stocked shelves in the fridge. She rocked from foot to foot, her ass shifting inside her silky pajamas. He had to stay behind the half-wall to hide his hard-on.

“And another thing,” she screeched, whirling to face him, shaking a carrot at him. “I’m not even human! What the hell?”

“I should’ve guessed,” he mumbled.

“Guessed how? Do I look different?” She held her arms wide, carrot flailing, her breasts swaying with each movement.

“You taste different,” he said. A shudder moved through his body at the memory of her sweet blood in his mouth.

She frowned and let her arms fall to her sides. “Bill said something about that, how I taste different.”

Eric clenched his jaw. Fucking Compton.

“I think that’s the thing that hurt worst during the spell. Losing him.” She tilted her head. “Not exactly losing him, really. It’s hard to explain.” She sighed.

“You lost your feelings for him.”

“Yeah,” she said sadly, slumping down in the chair at the table. “It was like a blanket wrapped all around me. Now, there’s next to nothing. Is that the only reason I liked him?” she asked, staring at the table. “Was it all a lie? Can vampire blood do that?” She looked at him with her eyes full of sorrow and his heart broke for her. Bill betrayed her. Used her. Now, she could feel the truth of it.

“Yes,” he whispered. “It fills you with a kind of euphoria and alters your emotions. I think he wanted you to feel that way toward him so he could control you.”

“Maybe,” she said, her voice wavering. She put her carrot on the table and stood.

“Do you need something else to eat?”

“I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go lie down for a while.”

A minute later, the muffled sound of crying came through her door. He wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but didn’t move. What’s wrong with me? He stormed outside and took a deep breath, hoping to clear his head. It didn’t work.

A while later, Sookie joined him on the front porch. “Do you want to play a game or something? I couldn’t fall asleep, and I don’t feel like reading.”

“Sure,” he heard himself saying, even though he had no intention of getting any closer to her than he already was. When she smiled, his reservations slipped away.

“Great.” She practically sprinted inside and started shuffling the cards. He joined her at the small table and noticed the angry red scrapes along the side of her hand and thumb.

“What happened?” he asked, resisting the urge to pick up her hand.

She focused on the cards. “The handcuff…”

“Oh.” He made a mental note to put it on tighter next time.

“Do you know how to play poker?”

He nodded and she smiled, getting up from the table.

“I swear I saw toothpicks in here somewhere,” she said, opening one cupboard after another.

“We could always play strip poker,” he suggested, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

She turned and gave him a dead-eyed stare. “I don’t think so.” She continued her search, looking in drawers. “Ah. Here they are! I think we should start with fifty each. Will you count them out while I shuffle?”

Eric moved as fast as possible, making two neat piles of fifty toothpicks.

“Wow. How do you move so fast?”

“Just part of being a vampire.”

She grimaced. “It’s kind of freaky.”

“Unlike your special gift?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes and took her time responding. “Maybe not.” She took a deep breath as she layered the edges of the cards and pushed them together. “Earlier, you said I was famous. What am I famous for?”

“We both know. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Is what true?” she replied, splitting the cards into two piles.

“That you’re a telepath,” he said.

She nodded slowly and shuffled the cards again. “Have been my whole life.”

He leaned toward her so their faces were inches apart. “Can you read my mind?” A flash of her wiggling on top of him in his coffin filled his head, when he wanted her to move her hand a little to the left and she did.

“No. I love it. You’re completely silent, just like Sheriff Pam and Bill. It’s glorious.” She looked around the small room. “Being here is kind of like a vacation for my brain.”

“I thought you hated it here,” he said, raising his eyebrow.

“I don’t like being held captive, or not knowing what’s going on, but it is nice and quiet. I like that part.” She opened her mouth like she was going to add something, but hesitated. “Why does your boss want to talk to me?”

He struggled to find the right words and sighed. “You’ll have to wait until you talk to her.”

“Her? Your boss is a woman?” She smiled. “I guess you can’t tell me more because you’re not at liberty to say.” She scoffed and started dealing cards. “So what’s she like?” She peered at him over the top of her cards.

Eric pressed his lips together. “Are we going to play or not?” he asked. He tried to glamour her into shutting up, but like his first attempt, it didn’t work.

“What are you doing?” She tilted her head. “You did that before, when we met. It tickles the back of my brain like a reminder nagging me.”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. You just looked at me and made my brain twitch. I’m not imagining things. Don’t make me feel crazy. I get that enough.”

“You feel crazy?” he asked, trying to keep her as far away from the queen as possible.

“Every day at work,” she said, pushing toothpicks into the pot, starting the game. “I hear the most awful stuff, and see it too. Some people think in images. It’s gross.” She looked at her cards and waited for Eric to match her bet or fold before going on, “There’s a guy who comes into Merlotte’s on a regular basis and never fail, after his third beer, he hits on me. The things that come out of that man’s brain makes me want to turn him in to the police, but what would I tell them? Officer, arrest this man, he likes the tie up his women and choke them during sex.” She laughed. “Talk about crazy!” She shook her head. “I always tell him no thank you, and warn any woman that gets within ten feet of him. The worst part is that he accidentally gropes me every night. Somehow, some way.” Her shoulders fell when Eric won the hand. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to pretend to be normal around perverts like that.”

Eric took the cards and shuffled slowly, matching his movements to hers so he wouldn’t appear freaky. “Your boss allows this behavior?” he asked, his shoulders tense from listening to her story.

“Sam’s a good guy. He steps in and helps me when I need it, but if I reported every single guy who touched me, half his clientele would be in trouble. Crazy Sookie is an easy target,” she said.

He frowned. “You think they take advantage of you because they think you’re crazy?” Maybe it’s because you’re gorgeous and they all genuinely want to fuck you. He kept that comment to himself.

She nodded. “Except for Dan, my three-beer drunk, no one would dream of dating me. I’m … too weird. Don’t get me wrong, Sam’s made a few attempts, but that would just be awkward if things didn’t work out.” She laughed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You’re easy to talk to, I guess.”

“Because I’m silent?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe. But I never talked to Bill like this; he was always so stiff and formal, asking to call on me. Who says that?”

“Someone who’s unwilling to live in the present.”

“I guess.” She bet heavily on her hand and ended up winning with a pair of aces. “Thanks for playing with me. I wish there was a T.V. here, although I don’t know what’s on at this time of night.”

“Nothing good,” he replied, smiling. “Your deal.” He slid the cards to her. They played the next four hands in relative silence, besides Sookie cursing under her breath when she lost.

“I think you’re cheating,” she said, pouting.

“I am not! What do I stand to win? Toothpicks!” He laughed. “If you made this game more interesting, I might be inclined to cheat.” If we’d been playing strip poker all this time, she’d be down to her panties by now. His dick responded to the image, making his pants uncomfortably tight. Control yourself, or you’re just like the creeps at her work. He filled his mind with everything and anything that would distract him.

Sookie laughed, her eyes smiling. “You’re not making a case for strip poker, you know.”

A burst of light lit up the room, followed by the distant sound of thunder.

Sookie stopped shuffling and pushed away from the table, prancing to the open window in the front room. “Finally. Rain.”

He joined her, watching her face instead of the storm brewing outside. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

“I love the smell of rain. It’s called petrichor. I have one of those word-a-day calendars, and it was the one I had a few months back. Don’t you love it?” She tilted her face up toward him and opened her eyes.

He wanted to kiss her right then. Wanted to gather her soft body in his arms and taste her. Instead he said, “Yes.”

“Can I go outside? Please? I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

He thought about it for a second and then agreed. He could catch her if she tried to run, and that would definitely be fun.

They stepped out onto the front porch together, standing side-by-side, waiting for the storm to come. The eave over the front of the house covered their heads, so when the rain started falling, it didn’t touch them, it just pattered against the worn metal roof. The air temperature dropped as the storm picked up speed. At first, the drops were little, but eventually, they grew in size, hitting the ground with a million little splashes into the dry earth.

Sookie pushed her slippers off, rolled up her pajama pants, and stepped down into the gathering mud off the front of the porch. She tilted her face up toward the sky and opened her mouth. Every time a drop of rain hit her tongue, she smiled. Water ran down her neck and followed the pull of gravity down her body, soaking her thin top. After a few minutes, it clung to her skin, cupping her breasts and caressing her ribs. She held her arms out and let the rain wash over her. The sky rumbled as the storm closed in. Another bolt of lightening streaked through the sky in the trees lining the river, startling her eyes open for a moment, and then thunder cracked again, louder than before.

“Sookie, it’s not safe.” He held his hand out to her, and she took it, but instead of coming toward him, she pulled on him.

“Come on, it feels good. You’re not even wet.” Her hand gripped his tightly, tugging him again.

“The storm is getting closer,” he warned, not taking his eyes off her.

“We’ll go inside soon,” she whined, yanking on his hand again.

He stepped off the porch and into the squishy mud, his feet sinking in. Rain forced his hair into his eyes, so he turned his face skyward and let it bathe him too. It ran into his ears and trickled down his neck.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” she shouted over the thundering drops, squeezing his hand.

“Yes,” he admitting, looking down at her and smiling. She released his hand and his smile fell. It felt better when she held him.

She put her arms out again and leaned her head back. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in all his life. He felt the thunder rumble through his chest just before lightning ripped the sky open above them. The rain fell faster and harder than before. Sookie dropped her arms and then ran for the front door.

“Did you feel that? The thunder was so loud!” She grinned at him and held her muddy feet under the sheet of water coming off the eave.

He nodded and washed his feet off too, watching her out of the corner of his eye. When she shifted to her other foot, she lost her balance, so he grabbed her shoulder to steady her.

“Thanks,” she said, her skin flushing slightly.

He removed his hand reluctantly and picked up her slippers so they could go inside. They stood in the front room, water dripping from their hair and off their clothes. Her top looked like it was painted on her.

“I should change,” she said.

“Me too, my shirt is soaked.” He pulled his T-shirt off and smiled when her eyes roved over his chest. He rested his hands against the waistband of his jeans and she swallowed hard.

“I’m going to go to my room,” she murmured. She turned away from him, her wet pajamas clinging to her ass, which swayed with each step she took.

He leaned against the front door and sighed. He knew at that moment he wouldn’t be able to keep his promise to the queen much longer.

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Thoughts? On to Detox: Chapter 6