Thyra Dane

A/N:

Do you read romance? Well, I do. Lately I`ve been reading tons of it – getting an iPad is dangerous because it`s soooo easy to download more and more of those addictive books. But romances aren`t just addictive. Some of them are annoying and repetitive (and some of them are really good – but they are not the ones I`m referring to in this one-shot). Then I remembered that Sookie also reads romance and this story popped into my head.

I want to thank Suki59 for betaing this story and Peppermintyrose for adding a few details I wouldn`t have thought of myself. Sookie and Eric belong to Charlaine Harris. I was only having a bit of fun with them.

This one-shot is completely unrelated to my ongoing Viking tale about Sookie the Shieldmaiden.

---

She stared at his ripped stomach and his muscular chest. “Oh my!” she exclaimed.

Yes, “oh my” indeed.

I was sitting in front of my fireplace with the afghan Gran had made for me, drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying the latest book in the Eric the Viking series. They`d just called from the library this morning to tell me it was in and I immediately went in to get it.

It was my day off and I was thrilled to have one more Eric book to read. He was my secret fantasy. The guy I dreamed of at night. The hot Viking who took what he wanted and gave a new meaning to the word “pillaging.” He could come pillage me any time. He was hot, rich and said all the right things to women. Not that he said much. He mainly took what he wanted and left his women panting for more.

I`d even started discussing Eric online. A blog had caught my interest and I tweeted day and night about the hotness that was Eric Northman. We`d discussed the things he said to his women – and he had a lot of women – and especially what he did to his women. With his women.

Eric was the ultimate lover. The perfect man.

Unfortunately he was just a fictional character and more than once I`d caught myself wishing he were more than that. He was hot, funny and could get out of any situation he got into. And the sex he had with the women. Phew. They were getting orgasm after orgasm. I`d never met a man who`d given me orgasm after orgasm, but then I`d never met a man who would take charge the way Eric Northman did.

Why weren`t more men like Eric?

It wasn`t that I was looking for a boyfriend. But who wouldn`t want to meet a hot guy like Eric – a man with a dark past full of betrayal – only waiting for the right woman to make him a better person? In the last book he`d declared that he didn`t want beauty, not anymore. Now he wanted a more “common woman” – someone with a heart of gold.

A common woman who could be his “Heart`s Desire.” In the first book in the series a witch had predicted he would one day meet a woman like that and ever since that prediction poor Eric had been looking for the woman with whom he was destined to be. So often he`d been mistaken. He`d made love to a woman and had believed she loved him back, only to be betrayed so terribly.

How I wanted to be that woman – to be Eric`s Heart`s Desire. To be the woman who let her hands trail their way down his chest, over his stomach to his ….

I knew he lived in the books – and in the Viking age – but that hadn`t stopped me from dreaming about him. We`d have mad sex. He would declare his undying love and I would say that he was the only one I`d ever loved. The only one I would ever love. We wouldn`t even go through all the silliness. You know, the heroine rejecting the hero for all kinds of stupid reasons. I didn`t have a father who had promised me to someone else and I didn`t have a secret that would haunt me so much that I couldn`t give in to Eric. Eric and I weren`t from different tribes at war with each other making it necessary for him to abduct me and for me to hate him. At first. And I would never betray him. Nope, there was nothing to stop me and Eric from engaging in sex from page one.

Nothing apart from his being a fictional character, that is.

I leaned back on the couch and took a sip from my coffee.

Why couldn`t I meet someone like Eric the Viking? Why couldn`t I meet Eric the Viking?

“I want you here with me, Eric Northman,” I said out loud.

A loud noise made me put down my cup. Then there was an explosion in the middle of my living room and I jumped behind my easy chair, not knowing what was happening. I was hit by a wave of air and knocked over.

It turned quiet. Eerily quiet.

I lay still, not knowing what had happened. From what I could see of my living room, it looked almost the same. A few things had been knocked over but nothing I saw that seemed like major destruction.

I peeked out from behind my chair. At first I couldn`t see what had caused the commotion. Then I saw something I couldn`t believe.

A man – a Viking – in my living room.

Change that. A half-naked Viking in my living room. The man was wearing only pants – and a huge Thor`s Hammer around his neck. Oh, and a huge belt with a belt buckle that could double as a murder weapon if thrown after you.

My gasp made the Viking go into a defensive stance with his sword raised high. When he saw me, he straightened up and with a grin he sheathed his sword. Apparently I was no danger to him.

The question was whether I was in danger from him.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Eric.”

For some reason that did not come as a surprise. He was exactly as I`d imagined him. Tall, long blond hair, broad shoulders and sexy as hell.

The only thing was that I hadn`t imagined him in my living room. Or maybe I had imagined him, but I certainly hadn`t expected him. He was a fictional character.

“What are you doing here?”

“I`m here to seduce you. The moment I saw you I knew I had to have you. You are my Heart`s Desire.” He looked at me and sniffed the air. “And I can smell that you want me already.”

How do you reply to that?

I crawled around from behind my chair to sit on it. Then I went back to staring at him.

“Could you repeat that?” I finally said. It wasn`t that I hadn`t heard him the first time. I was trying to buy time. Time for my brain to start working again.

“I am here to make love to you. To make you mine. You are my bonded across time and I`ve come to claim you. I want you as I can see that you want me.”

“Excuse me?”

Eric walked over to where I was sitting. Like all the women he`d been with in his books, I now had the privilege to see how the muscles worked in his chiseled chest.

Having him half naked in my living room wasn`t as amazing as I`d thought it would be. But then I`d never thought I would have him in my living room. Only fantasized about it. And that`s really not the same.

He got down on his knees between my legs and bent his long naked torso over me. “I`ve come to fuck you,” he whispered in my ear.

I leaned away from him. “I think I got the `make love to you` part,” I said. “But how? Why?”

I pinched my arm. I knew it wasn`t a dream, though, because if it had been, Eric and I would have been making mad love on the floor already.

Since I was awake, I was as far away from wanting to have sex with this man as I could probably get. A stranger dressed as a Viking – a fictional character from my books? No, I didn`t think so.

Eric apparently didn`t have those kinds of reservations. His hand slid up my leg and under the hem of my dress.

“Are you wet for me, Sookie?” he moaned into my ear.

Iiiiik. I pushed him away and jumped out of my chair – away from his touch.

“You don`t ask women questions like that!” I yelled, panting and having moved a few steps away from him. I wasn`t panting for the same reason the women in my romance novels usually panted. I did it because I`d just made an impossible jump and my heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. I needed to work out more.

“I can hear your heart beating for me, my lover.” Eric got up and closed the distance between us. “I know you want me but maybe there is something in your past that is holding you back? Did someone rape you? Because I will kill whoever did this to you. And then we can make sweet love when the burden of that rape has been lifted from your heart.”

I shook my head, not knowing what he meant. “No, I`ve never been raped. Not that it`s any of your business.”

Eric looked as if he gave it some thought. “Many of my women hold back because of traumas in their past but I help them overcome them by killing whomever trespassed against them. But maybe there is something else? Maybe it was just a bad breakup from someone? He hurt you and now you think you can not love someone again?”

I shook my head. Yes, I`d had breakups but none that were bad. Well, not that bad, anyway.

He continued, “You are clearly not … what do you call it? … plus sized so you cannot be rejecting me because you fear I will not be attracted to your body. Maybe you have a prettier sister who always put you in the shadow and this is why you hold back?”

I tried to process what he was saying. A reason for me to hold back? Try having a stranger in my living room claiming he was going to have sex with me.

“No, I only have a brother,” I said.

“And that brother of yours will use violence against me if I don`t treat you the way you should be treated?” he asked.

I had to laugh a little. No, I couldn`t imagine Jason`s bothering with whomever I was intimate with.

“Have you been promised to someone else, then?” he asked and I shook my head again. “Or your father guards your virginity with his life?”

I shook my head yet again, knowing that there wasn`t any virginity to guard or any father to guard it, and Eric frowned. He scratched his head and then lightened up in a smile.

“You have been cursed? A cruel witch has cursed you with a spell that prevents you from giving yourself to the handsome lover.”

I wanted to say that he wasn`t that handsome, just to take him down a few notches, but that would just not be true. “No, no curses,” I said.

Eric was quiet for awhile, apparently going through more reasons why I could be rejecting him. Then he smiled. “Did your parents have a bad marriage, perhaps? Maybe this is why you don`t want to give yourself to someone? I have found that some women are reluctant when it comes to love if their parents yelled at each other when the women were little girls.”

“My parents are dead,” I said. “They died in an accident when I was a kid.”

“Ah!” Eric exclaimed. “And you are afraid of again losing someone you love if you give your heart to me.” He wasn`t asking me, he was telling me.

Giving my heart to the handsome stranger in my living room was such a strange concept, I didn`t even consider answering him.

He pulled me into a deep embrace. “I will never leave you,” he whispered into my hair. “You are mine. We are bonded until the end of time.”

I wished he would stop talking because his words were rather silly. His body, on the other hand, was warm and hard and very nice to lean into. I took a deep breath, expecting the smell of mint or cinnamon – the way men always smelled in my novels. Some even smelled like coffee or chocolate, which would have been too much with my addictions to both. I might have ended up eating him.

Eric may have smelled like the musk so many romance novels talked about, though – if musk was the smell of male sweat. It wasn`t that Eric smelled bad or anything. I assumed he`d washed himself recently. But deodorants were not something he used; I was sure of that. Probably not soap as we know it either. And definitely not mint, cinnamon or anything like that.

He pressed himself harder into me and now I knew what the novels meant when they spoke of “his hardness pressed into my body” because there was certainly a hardness there.

Since Eric had actually kept quiet for some time and his body was warm and inviting, I felt myself softening towards him. I have needs – sue me.

Eric`s hands were gentle on my back and he kissed the top of my head. I wanted to ask him how he`d come to be in my living room but since I preferred the muted version of Eric, I wasn`t going to start any conversations with him.

Apparently, Eric didn`t understand my need for his silence because he leaned slightly back and looked me into my eyes.

“I will bathe you now, my lover, and then I will take you to your bed.”

I thought it over. This stud of a man naked in my shower and in my bed? Not such a bad idea. He was my fantasy lover, after all.

It was just … I wanted to giggle half the time he opened his mouth. Giggle or be annoyed. Then I figured he wouldn`t talk so much while we showered or had sex. Not as much as if we stayed in my living room, at least.

I grabbed his hand and led him to my bathroom.

“I am glad you finally gave in, Sookie,” Eric said.

“Finally? You`ve been here – what? – twenty minutes?”

“Yes, and it has been a terrible agony for me to wait for you to realize that we belong together.” He stopped me to pull me into his body but I managed to keep us going. “At first I was hurt by your rejection but now I see that you needed time to understand that I will not leave you as your parents did.”

“Uh, they died,” I said, wishing he would shut up.

“I will not die on you. I swear I will protect you with my life. Always.”

I didn`t want to get into a discussion whether promising not to die on me and to protect me with his life were contradictions. I knew I`d read this a thousand times in my novels but it wasn`t until I heard it from Eric that I found it entirely ridiculous.

We`d finally reached our destination. “My bathroom,” I said and opened the door.

Eric didn`t seem surprised at the differences between his world and the world of 2012. Which was a good thing because explaining everything to him would only lead to more talking and talking was not what was on my mind right now. I wanted those leather pants off him. And now.

I turned the shower on to give him a hint about undressing. Then I started unbuttoning my dress. Soon I was naked.

Eric grinned. “I am pleased that we don`t have to go through a scene where you are shy and cover yourself from me. Those scenes are most tiresome.”

I nodded at his pants. “But you`re covering yourself from me,” I said with a smile.

“But not for long, my lover and soon to be my bonded. Not for long.” And with that he ripped his leather pants off. One wouldn`t have thought that a human being could rip leather but he did.

I was suddenly very glad I`d undressed myself. I wouldn`t have wanted my underwear torn away from my body. This was another thing that sounded hot in the books but not when it was your underwear being ruined. Not when you knew how much you`d paid for it.

“Join me, my lover,” Eric said and stepped into my shower. I did as he asked.

Eric washed my hair and I washed his. There was no talking, only enjoying each other`s touch and I found that Eric was very welcome to apply for the position as my personal hairdresser.

He took the bar of soap, lathered his hands and started washing me. He gave me a light massage and I may have moaned just a little.

Then his hands moved down my stomach and slid down between my legs. Suddenly I had two fingers plunged up a place where I definitely wasn`t ready for any intrusions. Water has a nasty way of removing all natural moisture.

“Ouch,” I said but Eric apparently mistook it for a sign of pleasure because he continued to plunge his fingers in and out.

“Come for me, Sookie,” he groaned.

I pulled back. “Um, maybe when we`re in my bed?” I asked. I didn`t want to criticize his sexual performance. Not this early on, at least.

Eric jumped out of my shower and managed to splash water all over my floor. I sighed but figured I could always clean it up afterwards. He grabbed a towel and started drying himself off and then me. Then he lifted me up, bridal style, and I leaned into him. I hadn`t been carried around like this since I was a baby and though I had a stray thought about being able to walk myself, I enjoyed it.

He threw me down on my bed and I giggled when I bounced a few times. Looking up at him made me swallow. And probably drool. Eric the Viking was perfectly built. I wanted to thank the author who had created him. Or maybe I needed to thank my imagination for filling in the blanks in the author`s description.

And now I was going to make love to him. My giggle turned into a grin.

“I enjoy your smile, my lover,” Eric said. “Too many women choose to blush and be shy but you seem to be looking forward to my fucking you.”

Yeah, I was looking forward to it until you started talking about the other women you`d had sex with.

“Open yourself for me, Sookie.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Open yourself. I want to see the sweet honey running out of your Gates to Pleasure.”

I cringed. I knew Eric usually asked his lovers to “open themselves” and I`d found it hot when I`d read his saying those words. Now it just sounded stupid.

“Come here instead,” I said, motioning with my finger.

Eric looked puzzled for a moment, as if I`d ruined his modus operandi, but then he jumped onto my bed. I pulled him into an embrace, not wanting him to check me for honey or mention any gates again.

I kissed him and was thrilled when he kissed me back. His tongue slipped between my lips and sought mine. When our tongues met, he started rolling his around mine and pushing it in every direction in my mouth. I suddenly knew what the romances meant by “battling tongues.” It was a very strange feeling to have one`s tongue stalked in one`s mouth but we kept kissing.

Our hands roamed over each other`s bodies for awhile when suddenly his fingers ran down south on my body and again I had them plunging into me. What was it with all the plunging? I winced.

“Nails,” I whispered. Eric needed to cut his fingernails because they were scratching me every time he pushed his fingers inside me.

“What, my lover?” he asked, his fingers still plunging.

“Your nails are hurting me,” I said.

He stopped his plunging at once and looked at me. “My nails?”

I nodded.

We were still for a very long time and I was afraid the mood had been ruined entirely. But I didn`t regret stopping him. Who wants their softer parts used as a scratching post?

Then his face shifted to one of mischief.

“Luckily I am in the possession of a couple of body parts without nails.” He kissed his way down my stomach and I was full of anticipation when he landed between my legs, and my anticipation shifted to pleasure when his tongue darted out and he began to lick me, kiss me and suck me.

His tongue definitely didn`t have any nails.

I started moaning and writhing and he spread my thighs wider and held onto my hips. He`d just started a nice tingling in my body and I knew that if he kept on like this I would be having a nice orgasm in another few minutes.

Suddenly Eric raised his head and growled – yes, he growled – “Come for me, Sookie.”

The tingling stopped since there was no more friction where friction was needed.

Frustration made me push his head back between my thighs. “I can`t come if you don`t lick.”

Eric looked at me with surprise but then he ducked back down and continued his licking, kissing and sucking and soon the tingling was back. He worked hard and he was good at it so after a long buildup I felt the tingling turning into something more.

A sound came from deep in my throat and I took pleasure in the wave that washed over me. I inhaled and then relaxed back in my bed, enjoying the view of Eric looking up from between my thighs.

“That was wonderful,” I said.

“Your honey tastes exquisite,” he said. “I wish I could drink your love juices again and again and again.” He grinned. “And maybe I can.” And with that his head was between my legs again, sucking on an area that was way too sensitive to be sucked on yet.

I tried to scoot back but the look on his face made it impossible for me to tell him why I had to keep a distance between my crotch and his mouth. Instead, I pulled at his shoulders, hoping he would take a hint.

Luckily he did because the next thing I knew, he was positioning himself between my legs. Slowly he made his way inside me – all the way.

I should have asked him to wear a condom. I knew there was no AIDS in the Viking age and I hoped they didn`t have any other STDs. But I could still get pregnant. Or could I? Eric was, after all, only a fictional character. I knew I was making excuses for myself but the condom remained unmentioned.

Eric was big, in length and in girth. His girth was no problem – that only felt good – but he was a bit too long for me. I`d originally wrapped my legs around his hips, but in an effort to avoid all of his length inside me – I`m no fan of having my cervix bumped during sex because I only end up bleeding – I unwrapped them and dropped them on my bed.

But Eric had other ideas. He grabbed my legs, doubled me over and let my ankles rest on his shoulders. Then he pushed himself deep into me, fast and hard. Again. And again.

“Oh, Sookie. You feel so good around my cock. Come for me and milk me!” he shouted. Yes, he shouted. I was sure I would get a case of tinnitus from it.

He stared expectantly down at my face but when I showed no signs of coming and made no efforts to milk him – did I look like a milkmaid? – he gave it another shove and spasms ran through his body. He landed hard on my chest while growling into my ear. If I were ever to sleep with him again I would have to wear earmuffs.

Eric kissed me and then he pulled me over to lie on his chest.

“The feeling when you came, Sookie. It was amazing.” Eric`s hand stroked my back. I didn`t want to burst his illusions about my orgasm – well, lack of it – I just wanted him to leave.

I knew I was being unfair. Eric the Viking had acted exactly like he did in the books and it had turned me on every time I read about it. It wasn`t his fault he wasn`t as good in real life as between a book cover.

My hand glided over his stomach. He was very good looking, very muscular.

“And now we are bonded. You are my Heart`s Desire and my quest to find you is over. I am so happy, Sookie.”

I grunted, not wanting to commit myself to what he was saying. I wasn`t bonded to anyone.

“Let us make preparations for your journey home with me.”

“What?” I jolted up to a sitting position.

Eric smiled a smile that, if I`d painted it and hung it in a gallery, I would have called it True Happiness. “I`m taking you home with me.”

“You can`t do that. I can`t leave.” Was it even possible for me to enter a fictional world?

“But you are my bonded. We have overcome your reluctance towards me and we have made love.” He thought for a moment. “You could run out and injure yourself, of course, and then I could rescue you. Sometimes this happens before the final happy ending.”

“I don`t want to injure myself,” I muttered.

Eric got up and stood before me. “Good. It would pain me to see you injured. As much as I want to rescue you, I do not wish for this pain.”

“I`m sure it would pain me too to be injured too.”

Eric laughed a little. “Of course, it would, but it always pains the hero the most when the heroine has an accident. You know that.”

“I still don`t want to leave with you, Eric.”

He suddenly seemed to realize something. “Ah, you want me to take you with me by force. It will remove any guilt you might feel for giving yourself to me, for having had sex with me without our being married.” He grabbed me, pulling me from the bed and into his body. “Do you want me to tie your hands, Sookie? My belt is in your bathroom or I would have just done it without asking you.”

“NO, I do not want to have my hands tied. I want you to leave.” I was having enough of him.

Eric did not leave. He lifted my feet off the ground and held me close, our torsos as glued to each other. He had his arms around mine so the only thing I could move was my head and my legs. Then he started saying some words I couldn`t understand.

Suddenly the air was filled with sparkles and smoke. I tried to pull away from Eric. I had absolutely no desire to go with him to his home in the Viking age. Not even a fictional Viking age.

Eric held me closer and I was beginning to have trouble breathing. The room spun and everything went hazy. I knew it was now or never so I kneed Eric as hard as I could in the groin and when his reflex was to let me go, I jumped out of his reach.”

His shouts for me, his yelling, “Sookie!” was the last thing I heard before he dissolved into thin air.

A small stab of pain in my heart made me realize that I missed Eric already. Or maybe it was the dream of him I missed. I could never go back to my fantasies now. Not when I knew how they worked out in real life.

I remembered that I hadn`t read the whole book I`d borrowed at the library this morning. I wasn`t as eager to read it as I had been, but I still wanted to know how it ended. So I grabbed my bathrobe, put it on and went back to the couch where I picked up the book.

I quickly found that the scenes that always had made me very hot and bothered now made me either cringe or laugh. Eric the Viking was a romance hero made for romance heroines – not for ordinary women with ordinary needs.

“The end,” I finally read and Eric the Viking still hadn`t found his Heart`s Desire. He`d had sex a dozen times – a couple of them with multiple sex partners and one where he`d tied up his lover – but he was still on his quest for true love.

I turned the page and noticed there was a blurb about the next book in the series.

The Viking and the Barmaid of the Future

A Barmaid from the future calls out for Eric the Viking and he is magically sucked into a time and age he does not know. The barmaid has scars from the death of her parents – scars that make it hard for her to trust anyone. Even the love of Eric the Northman. Will this barmaid be his Heart`s Desire?

I put the book down, slightly shocked. Then I took a deep breath.

“No, I don`t think that barmaid will be the Heart`s Desire of Eric the Viking,” I muttered to myself and went to make myself a fresh pot of coffee.

The End.

---

A/N:

Yes, I know – romance heroes don`t go from one woman to the next (well, not in the text at least – he often does it before the book begins). He sees the heroine and falls for her and only her. I had to make this change, though, or Sookie wouldn`t have an Eric to read about 🙂

I hope the story made you laugh. I`ll go back to my romance reading *cough*