Trueblood : Five Payments

Satiation

She didn't have work the next day.

Sookie had mixed feelings about this, as she loved her days off, but didn't relish the prospect of being home all day with her thoughts. Her naked, sexy thoughts.

Dammit.

And she didn't even have her usual fallback of cleaning her house to occupy her hands. Thanks to Eric, the place was spotless. Gran herself would have looked around with owlish astonishment at how the well-worn surfaces sparkled and gleamed for the first time in decades. Sookie instantly felt annoyed at him again, for making her dead Gran feel deficient at cleaning her own house. Poor Gran. Stupid Eric.

So instead, Sookie sat in front of the tv watching daytime garbage. Ugh. She gave Maury a glance. Then reruns of Geraldo. Then the Oxygen network. (Who watched that trash?) Then finally settled on the local craft channel. Some sweet old biddy was walking her through the finer points of making a gourd birdhouse when a knock on her door made her jump.

Eric, her mind leapt to his name with forbidden excitement.

Her rational side roared with anger. "Shut up," she told herself out loud as she got up and headed to the entryway. It wasn't even two o'clock in the afternoon. He wasn't about to waltz through there in the middle of the day. And even if he did, she wasn't about to get all feverish about it. It was just Eric. She'd seen him a million times before. It was nothing new.

Except the next time, he's going to tear all your clothes off and fuck you blind.

"Shut up!" she said just as she opened the door.

The man on the other side flinched at her sudden appearance and shout. Sookie's eyes widened at her own shocking rudeness. "Oh, my gosh! I'm so sorry. I w-was... talking to someone else."

She noticed the pelican ballcap over the messy brown hair and realized it was the same man who'd delivered the deed to her house at Merlotte's. She smiled automatically. "Hello again."

The man simply blinked. There was no recognition in his stare as her held out a package and his electronic pad. "Pelican Couriers," he parroted to her, totally oblivious. "Sign here, please."

Sookie took the pad and signed her name, wondering if the man ever said anything else in his eight-hour work day. He took it back and handed her the small parcel. "Nice day."

"You too," she said to his already-retreating form. He was off her porch and into his truck before she'd shut her front door.

How can anyone grow up in the South and behave that rudely? Sookie shook her head. Lord, she'd never know. Even Jason, who had shiny rocks for brains, would have tipped his hat, smiled and called her ma'am. There was just no good excuse.

Sookie looked down at the package in her hands as she walked back into the living room and sat down in front of her hobby show.

A box. A plain, smooth black box. About twelve-by-twelve inches and only an inch deep. There was no address on the outside and no indication of the sender. Like she needed one. This box was obviously from him. And she had a good idea of what it was.

Sookie snorted in anger at its small, lingerie-esque size.

God only knew what he'd sent for her to wear. Probably a leather thong, or leapard-print handcuffs, or whatever. She pulled off the snug lid and tossed it on the floor. Instead of finding tissue paper and naughty undies, Sookie found herself staring at loose packets of rectangular paper. She picked them up and fanned them out in her hands.

Plane tickets.

Dozens of them. Two first class on Anubis Air going to a dizzying number of cities. Cairo. New York. Paris. Tokyo. Berlin. Sydney. Rio de Janiero. Prague. Bangkok. Moscow. Stockholm. A familiar piece of white paper was attached to the top ticket, the one for Istanbul. Eric consoled her through the elaborate flick of his pen.