Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [214]
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 boyfriend and Bill sounded ludicrous in the same sentence, “boyfriend” was Bill’s function in my world, anyway.
“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.