like this, well, it was deeply disgusting. I wasn't too sure I could keep my face from showing this, so I wiggled against Eric, and when he made a happy sound, I turned in his arms to face him. I put my arms up around his neck and raised my face. He happily complied with my silent suggestion. With my face concealed, my mind was free to roam. I opened myself up mentally, just as Eric parted my lips with his tongue, so I felt completely unguarded. There were some strong 'senders' in that room, and I no longer felt like myself, but like a pipeline for other people's overwhelming needs.
I could taste the flavor of Eggs's thoughts. He was remembering Lafayette, thin brown body, talented fingers, and heavily made up eyes. He was remembering Lafayette's whispered suggestions. Then he was choking those happy memories off with more unpleasant ones, Lafayette protesting violently, shrilly …
'Sookie,' Eric said in my ear, so low that I don't think another person in the room could've heard him. 'Sookie, relax. I have you.'
I made my hand stroke his neck. I found that someone else was behind Eric, sort of making out with him from behind.
Jan's hand reached around Eric and began rubbing my rear. Since she was touching me, her thoughts were absolutely clear; she was an exceptional 'sender.' I flicked through her mind like the pages of a book, and read nothing of interest. She was only thinking of Eric's anatomy, and worrying about her own fascination with Cleo's chest. Nothing there for me.
I reached in another direction, wormed into the head of Mike Spencer, found the nasty tangle I'd expected, found that as he rolled Cleo's breasts in his hands he was seeing other brown flesh, limp and lifeless. His own flesh rose as he remembered this. Through his memories I saw Jan asleep on the lumpy couch, Lafayette's protest that if they didn't stop hurting him he would tell everyone what he'd done and with whom, and then Mike's fists descending, Tom Hardaway kneeling on the thin dark chest …
I had to get out of here. I couldn't bear it, even if I hadn't just learned what I needed to know. I didn't see how Portia could have endured it, either, especially since she would have had to stay to learn anything, not having the 'gift' I had.
I felt Jan's hand massaging my ass. This was the most joyless excuse for sex I had ever seen: sex separated from mind and spirit, from love or affection. Even simple liking.
According to my four-times-married friend Arlene, men had no problem with this. Evidently, some women didn't either.
'I have to get out,' I breathed into Eric's mouth. I knew he could hear me.
'Go along with me,' he replied, and it was almost as if I was hearing him in my head.
He lifted me and slung me over his shoulder. My hair trailed down almost to the middle of his thigh.
'We're going outside for a minute,' he told Jan, and I heard a big smacking noise. He'd given her a kiss.
'Can I come, too?' she asked, in a breathless Marlene Dietrich voice. It was lucky my face wasn't showing.
'Give us a minute. Sookie is still a little shy,' Eric said in a voice as full of promise as a tub of a new flavor of ice cream.
'Warm her up good,' Mike Spencer said in a muffled voice. 'We all want to see our Sookie fired up.'
'She will be hot,' Eric promised.
'Hot damn,' said Tom Hardaway, from between Tara's legs.
Then, bless Eric, we were out the door and he laid me out on the hood of the Corvette. He lay on top of me, but most of his weight was supported by his hands resting on the hood on either side of my shoulders.
He was looking down at me, his face clamped down like a ship's deck during a storm. His fangs were out. His eyes were wide. Since the whites were so purely white, I could see them. It was too dark to see the blue of his eyes, even if I'd wanted to.
I didn't want. 'That was …' I began, and had to stop. I took a deep breath. 'You can call me a goody two- shoes if you want to, and I wouldn't blame you, after all this was my idea. But you know what I think? I think that's awful. Do men really like that? Do women, for that matter? Is it fun to have sex with someone you don't even like?'
'Do you like me, Sookie?' Eric asked. He rested more heavily on me and moved a little.
Uh-oh. 'Eric, remember why we're here?'
'They're watching.'
'Even if they are, remember?'
'Yes, I remember.'
'So we need to go.'
'Do you have any evidence? Do you know what you wanted to find out?'
'I don't have any more evidence than I had before tonight, not evidence you can hand out in court.' I made myself put my arms around his ribs. 'But I know who did it. It was Mike, Tom, and maybe Cleo.'
'This is interesting,' Eric said, with a complete lack of sincerity. His tongue flicked into my ear. I happen to particularly like that, and I could feel my breathing speed up. Maybe I wasn't as immune to uninvolved sex as I'd thought. But then, I liked Eric, when I wasn't afraid of him.
'No, I just hate this,' I said, reaching some inner conclusion. 'I don't like any part of this.' I shoved Eric hard, though it didn't make a bit of difference. 'Eric, you listen to me. I've done everything for Lafayette and Andy Bellefleur I can, though it's precious little. He'll just have to go from here on the little snatches I caught. He's a cop. He can find court evidence. I'm not selfless enough to go any further with this.'
'Sookie,' Eric said. I didn't think he'd heard a word. 'Yield to me.'
Well, that was pretty direct.
'No,' I said, in the most definite voice I could summon. 'No.'
'I will protect you from Bill.'
'You're the one that's gonna need protection!' When I reflected on that sentence, I was not proud of it.
'You think Bill is stronger than me?'
'I am not having this conversation.' Then I proceeded to have it. 'Eric, I appreciate your offering to help me, and I appreciate your willingness to come to an awful place like this.'
'Believe me, Sookie, this little gathering of trash is nothing, nothing, compared to some of the places I have been.'
And I believed him utterly. 'Okay, but it's awful to me. Now, I realize that I should've known this would, ah, rouse your expectations, but you know I did not come out here tonight to have sex with anyone. Bill is my boyfriend.' Though the words
'I am glad to hear it,' said a cool, familiar voice. 'This scene would make me wonder, otherwise.'
Oh, great.
Eric rose up off of me, and I scrambled off the hood of the car and stumbled in the direction of Bill's voice.
'Sookie,' he said, when I drew near, 'it's getting to where I just can't let you go anywhere alone.'
As far as I could tell in the poor lighting, he didn't look very glad to see me. But I couldn't blame him for that. 'I sure made a big mistake,' I said, from the bottom of my heart. I hugged him.
'You smell like Eric,' he said into my hair. Well, hell, I was forever smelling like other men to Bill. I felt a flood of misery and shame, and I realized things were about to happen.
But what happened was not what I expected.
Andy Bellefleur stepped out of the bushes with a gun in his hand. His clothes looked torn and stained, and the gun looked huge.
'Sookie, step away from the vampire,' he said.
'No.' I wrapped myself around Bill. I didn't know if I was protecting him or he was protecting me. But if Andy wanted us separated, I wanted us joined.
There was a sudden surge of voices on the porch of the cabin. Someone clearly had been looking out of the window—I had kind of wondered if Eric had made that up—because, though no voices had been raised, the showdown in the clearing had attracted the attention of the revelers inside. While Eric and I had been in the yard, the orgy had progressed. Tom Hardaway was naked, and Jan, too. Eggs Tallie looked drunker.
'You smell like Eric,' Bill repeated, in a hissing voice.
