Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #6)(61)
Author: Charlaine Harris

We went down the stairs, Andre leading, the queen next, and me trailing behind. Andre had insisted I take off my shoes and my earrings so it could be inferred that I had undressed and then just slipped back into the dress.

The other vampires were waiting obediently in the courtyard, and they sprang to attention when we began making our way down. Jade Flower’s face didn’t change at all when she read all the clues as to what we’d been up to in the past half hour, but at least she didn’t look skeptical. The Berts looked knowing but uninterested, as if the scenario of Sophie-Anne watching her bodyguard engaging in sex (with a virtual stranger) were very much a matter of routine.

As he stood in the gateway waiting for further driving instructions, Rasul’s face expressed a mild ruefulness, as if he wished he had been included in the action. Quinn, on the other hand, was pressing his mouth in such a grim line that you couldn’t have fed him a straight pin. There was a fence to mend.

But as we’d walked out of Hadley’s apartment, the queen had told me specifically not to share her story with anyone else, emphasis on the anyone. I would just have to think of a way to let Quinn know, without letting him know.

With no discussion or social chitchat, the vampires piled into their car. My brain was so crowded with ideas and conjectures and everything in between that I felt punch-drunk. I wanted to call my brother, Jason, and tell him he wasn’t so irresistible after all, it was the fairy blood in him, just to see what he’d say. No, wait, Andre had implied that humans weren’t affected by the nearness of fairies like vampires were. That is, humans didn’t want to consume fairies, but did find them sexually attractive. (I thought of the crowd that always surrounded Claudine at Merlotte’s.) And Andre had said that other supernaturals were attracted by fairy blood too, just not in the eat-’em-up way that vamps were. Wouldn’t Eric be relieved? He would be so glad to know he didn’t really love me! It was the fairy blood all along!

I watched the royal limo drive away. While I was fighting a wave compounded of about six different emotions, Quinn was fighting only one.

He was right in front of me, his face angry. "How’d she talk you into it, Sookie?" he asked. "If you’d yelled, I’d have been right up there. Or maybe you wanted to do that? I would have sworn you weren’t the type."

"I haven’t gone to bed with anyone this evening," I said. I looked him straight in the eyes. After all, this wasn’t revealing anything the queen had told me, this was just… correcting an error. "It’s fine if others think that," I said carefully. "Just not you."

He looked down at me for a long moment, his eyes searching mine as if he were reading some writing on the back of my eyeballs.

"Would you like to go to bed with someone this evening?" he asked. He kissed me. He kissed me for a long, long time, as we stood glued together in the courtyard. The witches did not return; the vampires stayed gone. Only the occasional car going by in the street or a siren heard in the distance reminded me we were in the middle of a city. This was as different from being held by Andre as I could imagine. Quinn was warm, and I could feel his muscles move beneath his skin. I could hear him breathe, and I could feel his heartbeat. I could sense the churn of his thoughts, which were mostly now centered on the bed he knew must be somewhere upstairs in Hadley’s apartment. He loved the smell of me, the touch of me, the way my lips felt… and a large part of Quinn was attesting to that fact. That large part was pressed between us right at this very moment.

I’d gone to bed with two other males, and both times it hadn’t worked out well. I hadn’t known enough about them. I’d acted on impulse. You should learn from your mistakes. For a second, I wasn’t feeling especially smart.

Luckily for my decision-making ability, Quinn’s phone chose that moment to ring. God bless that phone. I’d been within an ace of chucking my good resolutions right out the window, because I’d been scared and lonely throughout the evening, and Quinn felt relatively familiar and he wanted me so much.

Quinn, however, was not following the same thought processes – far from it – and he cursed when the phone rang a second time.

"Excuse me," he said, fury in his voice, and answered the damn phone.

"All right," he said, after listening for a moment to the voice on the other end. "All right, I’ll be there."

He snapped the tiny phone shut. "Jake is asking for me," he said.

I was so at sea with a strange combination of lust and relief that it took me a moment to connect the dots. Jake Purifoy, Quinn’s employee, was experiencing his second night as a vampire. Having been fed some volunteer, he was enough himself to want to talk to Quinn. He’d been in suspended animation in a closet for weeks, and there was a lot he would need to catch up on.

"Then you have to go," I said, proud that my voice was practically rock steady. "Maybe he’ll remember who attacked him. Tomorrow, I have to tell you about what I saw here tonight."

"Would you have said yes?" he asked. "If we’d been undisturbed for another minute?"

I considered for a minute. "If I had, I would’ve been sorry I did," I said. "Not because I don’t want you. I do. But I had my eyes opened in the past couple of days. I know that I’m pretty easy to fool." I tried to sound matter-of-fact, not pitiful, when I said that. No one likes a whiny woman, least of all me. "I’m not interested in starting that up with someone who’s just horny at the moment. I never set out to be a one-night-stand kind of woman. I want to be sure, if I have sex with you, that it’s because you want to be around for a while and because you like me for who I am, not what I am."

Maybe a million women had made approximately the same speech. I meant it as sincerely as any one of those million.

And Quinn gave a perfect answer. "Who would want just one night with you?" he said, and then he left.

Chapter 19

I slept the sleep of the dead. Well, probably not, but as close as a human would ever come. As if in a dream, I heard the witches come carousing back into the courtyard. They were still congratulating one another with alcohol-lubricated vigor. I’d found some real, honest cotton sheets among the linens (Why are they still called linens? Have you seen a linen sheet in your life?) and I’d tossed the black silky ones into the washer, so it was very easy to slip back into sleep.

When I got up, it was after ten in the morning. There was a knocking at the door, and I stumbled down the hall to unlock it after I’d pulled on a pair of Hadley’s spandex exercise pants and a hot pink tank top. I saw boxes through the peephole, and I opened the door feeling really happy.

"Miss Stackhouse?" said the young black man who was holding the flattened boxes. When I nodded, he said, "I got orders to bring you as many boxes as you want. Will thirty do to start with?"