A/N: This is my first-multi-chapter fan fiction, so please don't hesitate to offer constructive thoughts on plot and how Sookie, Eric, Pam, Bill, etc., might really act based on the books. Also, since I'm new to this, I don't understand what all the terms mean (AU/AH, etc.). Anyone want to enlighten me?

This story takes place post-Dead and Gone and is my imagining of how Eric and Sookie might mend their relationship. You know they want each other. Or at least I do. Thanks for reading, and plese comment!

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to any of these characters. I'm just grateful to Charlaine Harris for her willingness to create them and share them with the world.

Eric's POV

The stench of human drinks and human desperation burned my nose. The racket of the bar was high tonight. It was a Saturday, a customarily busy night, as well as the night when the most tourist buses arranged their visits. I had ordered five of my area vampires to present themselves to the masses tonight and they were sitting in various stages of boredom and arousal, as fangbangers and tourists milled about them.

I sat alone and tried to drown out the stench. So many bodies, in such close proximity, rubbing up against one another, transferring scents until one human is indistinguishable from another. Vermin, indeed.

There had been only one--just one human who had ever distinguished herself from this mass around me. As I had done so many times, I allowed my mind to wander back to that night, the night when something changed in my world. I shift in my seat, allowing my long legs to splay out in front of me, absently kicking the pathetic, drawn creature at my feet. In my mind's eye, she is walking in all over again. Tight, white dress, tiny red flowers sprinkled across it like so many delicate drops of blood, low neckline offering me a suggestion of her magnificent breasts and emphasizing her elegant, long neck. Oh a neck to be fondled and teased, throbbing with that rich blood.

I clinched my jaw, clicking and unclicking it in frustration. It was true: In my millennium on this planet, I have bedded thousands of women. A simple task, really. Assume a posture of kindness, retract fangs, look up steadily and send my mind into theirs. It was no challenge at all, not anymore. Like flipping a switch. One steady gaze, a few whispered lies, and their eyes glazed over and they would drape themselves across me, murmuring sweet words of devotion and baring their necks to me, spreading their legs for me.

Since the Great Revelation, it had gotten even easier. Now we were immortals in their midsts, danger personified, and there was a strain of self-hating female human that lined up to be used this way.

I would take these women, as often or as sparingly as I chose, depending on the quality of their blood, the sweetness of their sex. Occasionally, I found one I kept for a few weeks or even a year or two, her blood was so fine. But it was a passing fancy. Even the psychic.

I exhaled an unnecessary breath and glanced again around the room. One look, and any human in this room would be mine.

Mine.

I closed my eyes against the reality. Somewhere, 30 miles from this bar that teemed with willing and desperate women, lay my Sookie. My lover, who refused to see me, who insisted that I had failed her by not rescuing her from the fairies Lochlan and Neave. She had no idea, and denied me the right to explain. The one woman whose brain resisted my influence and whose heart maddeningly did the same. She made me... work for her affection. She took my gifts grudgingly, allowing only the most practical. I scoffed. Gravel. A coat. A door. That was all. She refused even an invitation to my daytime resting place, unnecessary and reeking of my unaccustomed feelings for her. And she didn't want to know how I felt about her. I should have known long before Niall contacted me that she wasn't entirely a human woman.

She wasn't immune to my influence, it was true. She had succumbed multiple times, yielding to my hands, my cock, my demanding mouth. And she had not just yielded but kept up, challenged me, brought me to heel in a way I hadn't imagined in all my centuries of life. She had demanded, cried, directed. She had matched me, even then.

But why, then, wasn't she here? Why did she insist on keeping herself away from me? This punishment, surely, was more than I deserved. She must have no comprehension of her true value, to me or in the world. She must not understand what a rare flame of light she is in this dark night. She must be oblivious to the deep beauty of her body and the sweetness and lightness of her blood and the startling depth of her character. Just then, my hands remembered the feel of her breasts in them, the way her nipples nuzzled into my palms perfectly. Ahhh. Her hurried breathing had made her breasts heave against my palms, tracing tiny shapes there, burning themselves into my cool skin, making my hands clasp closed even now. I growled lowly to myself, a sound only audible to other vampires. Why was she so stubborn?

I closed my eyes and my hands clinched closed and open again. I bit down hard in frustration. A burn built in my chest, a familiar hunger.

I opened my eyes and surveyed the crowd once again. The women here, if I could call them that--the sheep, the cattle, waiting to be consumed--were always of two types. One, the gaunt V addicts hoping for a fix from a vampire stupid enough to share his blood with them. It almost never happened, but these women had been glamoured to within an inch of there mental capacity and believed, over and over, than they would find what they were looking for here.

The other type, the fangbangers in their gaudy goth outfits, painted false fang marks on their necks if they hadn't been fortunate enough that evening to have been claimed by a vampire who felt peckish. The ones who had wore their fang marks like a badge of honor: Vampire Approved. They had no idea that they were just a snack, junk food for a species that, like human themselves, had grown used to fatty, unsatisfying meals.

My Sookie, she was none of those things. She was exquisite--a five-course tasting menu, just hinting at her capacity for giving and receiving pleasure.

Just then, a blond flickered across the edge of my consciousness. I looked up in surprise. But it was only a plump blond woman with kewpie doll lips and wide hopeful eyes glancing at me meekly. Like the others, she was clad in a tight black dress that fell to the floor and pressed her small breasts together to create cleavage. I glared and she looked encouraged.

She would do.

With one glance toward Pam and an almost imperceptible nod in the blond's direction I stood, shaking off the fangbanger clinging to my leg like a barnacle, and cut through the crowd toward my office. A minute later, Pam followed, blond in hand.

I leaned back in the chair behind my desk and tented my fingers. The girl was already pink, the blood rushing to her surface like Pavlov's dog after the bell.

"Your meal, master?" Pam deadpanned. She gave me a pointed look and shook her head. She shoved the girl toward me and left the room, clicking the door shut behind her.

The girl stumbled, twisting her fingers together awkwardly. She tottered on her five-inch fuck-me pumps and tried to regain what I could only assume was her version of alluring submission. She clasped her hands behind her, thrusting her tiny breasts toward me.

"Master," she breathed, nearly mute with anticipation. "How may I serve you?"

She took in my frame, adorned in a black vest and jeans. I could smell her arousal and watched as she rubbed her legs together absently, seeking friction. She smelled off to me, soured. She didn't have Sookie's tantalizing bouquet. But she was rounded like Sookie, if a little larger. Her blond hair was limp, straw-like.

I grimaced.

"Take off your dress."

She practically glowed with pleasure. Ugh. This one.

She scrambled to pull the fabric over her head and expose herself to me. I appraised her. Her soft, rounded shoulders gave way to two tiny breasts constricted together and up in a black padded bra. Her waist was fleshy, spilling over her tiny black mesh panties, where I could see her excitement glistening even now.

"Turn," I commanded.

Her bottom was more fleshy, ballooning out into a dimpled, high derriere covered with a string of thong. Her legs jutted out in thick, curving blocks. If I cared--and I barely cared enough to note it--I was sure there would be some human man who would worship this body. But the sight of it made me angry. She was not my Bonded. She didn't have her tanned skin or her fleshy but smooth ass that curved perfectly into her shapely, delicate legs. I felt myself stiffen at the memory. Rage pooled between my shoulder blades.

"Come," I beckoned.

She turned and her eyes grew wide, confused. Her stubby fingers slipped under the mesh of her panties and stroked into her folds. Her eyes closed and she shivered.

"No," I barked. "Come here."

The color drained momentarily from her face as she stiffened. If she were my Bonded, I would have pulled her wet hand to my mouth and sucked, pressing my fang into one finger until a tiny bead of blood fell into my mouth. An amuse bouche. The thought of it made me growl.

The girl was in front of me now and breathing hard, her chest blotchy with blush.

I grimaced. I wanted to get this over with.

"Kneel."

She scrambled down onto her haunches as I reached down to my hard-on and unzipped my pants.

"Suck and I might bite you later," I growled.

When she hesitated, I added, "You may touch me."

She lunged at my cock and immediately took the head into her mouth. Despite myself, I hissed and threw my head back. She licked and nibbled but I looked down in frustration. The mouth on me wasn't plump and glistening the way Sookie's did, though it was warm enough and wet enough. The hair didn't glow with sunshine. The breasts below weren't magnificent. Ah those breasts again. They had been my undoing. Finally feeling them in my hands, in my mouth. My fangs ran out at the memory and they itched to bite down around her nipples and draw, sucking her pebbled nipple and exquisite blood into my mouth as one. An amazing first course. I could lick and bite at them for hours. And just then, I swore to myself I would do that again. I would be in my Bonded's yellow flowered bedroom and I would suck her breasts and nipples until she was screaming my name.

Oh gods, just the thought of it made my cock grow larger and twitch. I growled. The girl between my legs moaned. I looked down absently. I had nearly forgotten she was there but for the mild relief she was providing. I put my hand on her neck, her coarse hair irritating my palm, and pressed her further down onto me. I am not hard for you, I wanted to tell her. You are a sad, small substitute for the exquisite gift that is my Bonded. You do not suck my cock as well as she. Your murmurs and moans mean nothing to me.

Just my Bonded.

Any little groan from her lips could and did make me hard. The swimming wetness of her sex ignited me. I groaned at the memory and thrust my hips up, holding the girl's head down onto me so I could use her mouth. Sliding into Sookie's sex was a rare treat. She fit. I fit. Her wet folds beckoned to me, her blood plumping her slick opening appealingly, the blood of her femoral artery hammering at my cheek.

Dear gods, her sex. To thrust into her, to hear her whimpers and cries. Her need. She had needed me, I thought with gratification. And she still did, I knew it. She was mine. My bonded. My lover. O to fuck her, I thought as I grunted, my head growing larger. To bite her, and feel that extraordinary blood flood into my mouth. I moaned in need, my balls tightening, preparing. To rub myself all over her. To mark her with my scent. To proclaim her mine. To have her, always.

Ah. Ah. My hips bucked and my seed flew into the girl's mouth.

When it was over, I let the girl up. She was leaking and snot was running out of her nose and my cum drooled from her mouth. My stomach lurched, in hunger and disgust. On my Bonded, such a look was a supreme gift--though I would not hold her down as forcefully as this bloodbag.

Speaking of.

"Stand."

She did I caught her gaze with mine. Her mind was easy to take, as pliant as soft wax. I put my hands on her shoulders and said softly, "I will not fuck you, and you may not touch yourself. But you may cum when I bite you. You will not remember this. When I am done feeding, you will gather your gown and leave out the back entrance and you will not come back here."

Her glazed eyes registered understanding and she nodded.

"Turn," I commanded. I couldn't bear her eyes any longer--not the eyes of my beloved. I seethed. I caressed her neck with the back of my hand. She shivered and tilted her head to offer herself to me more. Biting here might be more pleasurable for us both and it was certainly easier. But I didn't want to give her bragging rights. This was nothing to be proud of.

I lifted her arm--not the soft, shapely arms of my bonded--and licked at her sour pit, bringing her artery into sharp relief. She was panting in anticipation, moaning incoherently. I could barely stomach this, but my hunger was great.

I grazed my fangs along her vein, checking its readiness. The blood pumped faster. I latched on and pressed, sucking the coppery wetness into my mouth. It had a vaguely wooden flavor, damp and rotted, as if she'd been eating too many mushrooms lately. It had none of the lightness and depth of Sookie's blood and I almost couldn't choke it down. But I would not be denied. Sookie could avoid me, but I wouldn't waste away while I waited. I drew angrily on the little wounds, taking mouthful upon mouthful of the putrid stuff.

I felt the girl's legs buckle as she writhed with orgasm and I held her up to suck greedily from her. I will not be denied. I will not.

Slowly, I relented. If I wasn't careful, I would drain her, and I couldn't afford another run-in with the law. I'd already glamoured my way through a dozen police officers, and everyone in the bar had seen Pam bring her to me.

So I stopped and allowed the girl to slump to the floor.

I stood, tucked myself back into my jeans and left the room.