In front of me- right in the middle of the bar they stood, handing out flyers.

'And remember, thuesdays is ladies night so bring a date...' a blond tall women in a trenchcoat handing out flyers, told the mesmorized crowd.The man he was handing the flyer to gave her a big dirty grin while eye-fucking her. The tall blond women raised an eyebrow at him.

'That is, if you can get one!'

His friends laughed. The athmosphere was charged with (sexual-) tention, but I couldn't quite make out why. Until I saw him.

And with that, my heart stopped. Time froze and my vision got blurry, thanks to the tears that fillled up my eyes once more.

Stay calm Ash!

Conceal don't feel, don't let them now. Right?

As the women continued handing out the flyers he turned around in a swift sudden motion and eventhough he didn't raise his voice, every little word cut through the room like a sharp knife.

„Not that one"

„Dude!", the man started to complain. Stupid, stupid man!

The bar fell silent and even I stopped breathing. It was obvious, he had made a tremendous mistake. The man next to him streched out his arm towards the women in order to pick the next flyer out of her hand, revealing burned flesh around his lower arm. I closed my eyes for his foulishness. I wasn't the only one, who'd noticed. This man, easily over 6 foot tall with hair down to his shoulders and a body rippled down with muscles moved faster than my stupid human eyes could register his movements. I jumped in surprise, dropping my pen. With that, I got his attention.

God damnit!

Both vampire heads turned toward me, confirming my feared suspiscouns. My blood started trickling through my body ice-cold. From one moment to the next I felt as if I'd been thrown back two years. I could feel how I lost all control of my facial expressions and I had to draw in a shake breath.

Don't make any mistakes now...

But my look, my breath or simply my pounding heart must have giving someting away, because not one second later this man, who used to be half a room away, was standing within an inch of me, sizing me up. Sparking blue eyes fixated on me, taking away my breath.

I fought every last of my carefully crafted and expended fighting reflexes and shallowed hard. It took nearly all of me and my basically non-existing self-control to keep my feeling bottled up at that moment, not showing my crushing hate that was cursing through my vains like poison.

Not like that. Not now. I wasn't ready yet.

I suppose for people around me I must have looked like I had turned to stone. The feelings keeping me in place would probably best be described as staying perfectly still so you wouldn't get stung by a bee.

The bee that was flying around you, about to settle down on your skin to prolong your suffering of surpressing your instincts to jump up and run away since you where deadly allergic to said bee. So you panic silently, because you would not want to upset said bee, because she could sting you. And kill you. If you don't die of not breathing before that, because you are just to damn scared and somehow forgot how to draw in breeth. Or how to not start crying because the bee right in front of you already killed the love of your life.

Something like that.

Alright the metaphor was kind of losing its meaning in the end, but it was hard enough to think straight at that moment, let alone form a metaphor. The only thing I could hear was the increasingly louder and faster beating of my aching heart.

I realised I had tried to fool myself before, when I first realised he had entered the bar, trying to convince myself it had to be misunderstanding or that I must have had mistaken the stranger in the bar. Like I said, I was wrong. The man just inches away from my face was with no doubt Eric Northman.

Month of my life, half of my sanity and multiple leads leading to nowhere but more heartbreak and I finally had come up with one little thing. A Name. The name of the man responsible for my boyfriends death.

Eric Northman.

From that point forward it had been almost scarily easy to find further information. A basic google search revealed almost everything I needed to know about him, including a biography, his current location and a picture. Admittedly, my heart made a little jump when I first glanced at his almost perfect complexion before aching strongly and falling into a million pieces.

I really had found him. Or at least I though I had. It was almost to easy.

Being this strongly represented in the internet these days was either really stupid or really really smart and cunning and leading me into a trap. All those month coming up with nothing and than all of the sudden I would be able to find out everything to hunt him down in 20 minutes?

All those previous month I had had forbidden myself to grieve. To wallow in self-pity and desperation. My search for revenge had led me down the easy part of obsession. Searching for revenge, for him was my reason to get up in the morning. To get dressed, to shower, to train for a fight since everything that used to be important to me was already lost. So finding him in the end was what crushed me once more and left me crawled up sobbing on the floor.

I couldn't collect myself after that for hours. Tears kept streaming down my face to a point where my head felt like exploding and my eyes dried up and burning. All I wanted was get to sleep and maybe never wake up again. Just rest. Just stop hurting. But my body kept forcing out tears to the point where I was a hickupping, sobbbing mess until I finally found the solution.

Anger.

I was angry at myself, that I was just lying around crying like a child instead of taking action. I was angry at my body, which I had left to become weak and useless when I had lost control over it.

I took in a deep breath I forced my tears to stop dwelling up. It worked.

Carefully I explored my newly found safe haven. My new fountain of strength. I was angry at my boyfriend for leaving me behind in this cruel and painful world, but that was no comparison to the shocking intensity I could focus my anger on the man, that took all that away from me.

Eric fucking Northman

I tapped on the black screen of my computer eeing his smug face once more. A wave of pure hate washed over me and took my breath away, leaving everything in its wake covert in  a red haze. Almost out of my mind I threw my Laptop across the room against the wall causing it to break and leaving a big gaping hole.

Obviously the laptop was broken after that, but it didn't matter anyways. I had all the information I needed. At the same evening I packed my bags and left for Louisiana.

That had been ten month ago and now the man I hated with such intensity stood right in front me, ogeling me.  He tilted his head just the slightest, a grim smile appearing on his lips. Slowling his fangs extended while he leaned in dangerously close. Again the wave of hatred washed over me. I was shivering had goosebumps all over my body and my vision got dark red and blurry but I didn't flinch. I didn't even move an inch when his gaze swiftly took in my whole complexion.

Amusement colored his face. The woman that had accompanied him looked in our direction, raising her eyebrow.

'Eric, what the fuck are you doing?', she sighed annoyed.

'Något om henne är annorlunda', he repeated breathing in deeply without taking his lingering eyes away from me.

His voice was deep and hoarse. He was so close that his cold breath touched my face and cause my heated up skin to tickle. The feeling spread across my body, elecrifying me to an extend I had never felt before.

The woman rolled her eyes.

'Not that again...'

'Pamela...'

Erics voice calm, controlled but cut through the air swiftly with such authority that everybody in the room seemed to shrink in their seats trying to hide away.

Everybody but me.

Erics eyes widend just enough that I noticed the shift in his expression. His head tilted to one side. The intensitity of the atmosphere around us got, if possible, even more... well intense. Against all reasoning my heartbeat slowed down.

Actually, the longer I looked into his mesmorizing beautiful blue eyes, the more I felt like I could let go of the feelings I was holding back so vigirously. I had to. My body was basically aching and burning. Feelings bubbled up, clawed their way toward an exit. Anger was the strongest masking further emotions I had surpressed for so long. Awful feelings like breathtaking sadness. Tears started to dwell up in my eyes once more this evening. I tried to redirect my thoughts.

Which lead me to the mistake of eye up my opponent.

Just like probably every last being in this universe, I reacted to his breathtaking rough beauty. It wasn't just his strong jawed face or his silky hair that drew me in. It wasn't even his perfect, Adonis like body which moved in a forbiddenly delicious way with every step he took. It was the way his intelligence and humor sparkeld in his eyes, the way his sensational lips moved toward a tiny crocked smile after he saw something interesting (apparently for some reason me in this moment). He knew how he could manipulate others with his apperance with what he had to offer. And he was a man who would use those tools to take what he wants.

It was his whole BEING.

The shock over the fact that even I was seemingly lusting after him, being drawn in by his charm, sobered me (at least partly) up. Still I leaned forward towards him, following an undescribable instinct to get closer to him.

I felt panic rising, my eyes opened wide. What was happening?

It was impossible for my body to draw away my gaze that was cought by his. Like a bucket of ice water I felt the feeling of dispair and shame wash over me.

His gaze kept being intertwined with mine which was bad. But not as bad a the sudden new weird thing I felt. It was as if ...somehow... he was reaching inside me, looking for something in my beaten and brused fragile soul while I had to stand aside having my hands bound behind my back unable to intervene.

It was abasing, shameful and most mortifyingly: a part of me liked it.

As if he was reading my mind, his lips curled up a bit more, reavealing his sharp, pointy teeth. His voice resonated with his dark husky tempre down to my very core and I shuddered full of relish and shame.

'Why aren't you afraid?' he asked point blank and I felt the blood leaving my face.

I had given myself away. The truth was, one couldn't be afraid when anger was the primary emotion. Probably some left over relict from the evolution to allow hunters to fight without fear till death.

This stupid, useless instinct had given me away. As fast as I could I tried to come up with something to say and before I could think my actions all the way through I heard myself answer dryly: 'I'm from New York.'

I could have slapped myself right across the face. Why would I give away even that much information about myself to my arc enemy? With tention in my shoulders I waited for his next question when his loud and unexpected laugh made me twitch.

Well I for sure wasn't expecting that.

His loud and dark laugh resonated in the silence of the bar. If the rest of the people in Merlottes wasn't scared before, they for sure where terrified now.

Even I jumped this time and took a step back. The weird pull, this terrifying connected that had occurred was broken (-thank god) and I made sure I got some distance.

That wasn't that plan, I wasn't ready, I had to get away from him for now. 

Eric was about to do his weird focus thing on me again when the door of Merlottes was being pushed open and a desperate looking Sookie entered the room. She was much faster able to analyse her surroundings and finally looked at me with concern and an angry look at Eric.

'Darn it Eric, what have you done?', she barked at him and turned to me right after. 'You okay honey?'

I looked at her completly in shock and fear washed over me. Eric would do something to her, if she'd continue talking to him like that.

Against my Assumtion, he just turned his head a bit and looked at Sookie before turning his head back to me with an innocent expression on his face.

Oh, he couldn't fool me...again.

His girlfriend (or whatever the blond woman was to Eric) appeared next to him which caused my tense and aching muscles to move before I even truly decided what to do next. Without thinking I jumped forward to protect Sookie. I might not knew her that well and we weren't the best of friends or anything (eventhough I kind of grew to like the quirly telepath) but I sure as hell wouldn't let anyone else I knew get hurt by those psychopath ever again. So if he wanted to hurt her, I sure would put up a fight.

"Just some Smalltalk Sookie, my Sookie", he teased before he turned around and watched me curiously. "Ash, hm?"

He pouted his lips and his blue eyes twinkled bemused.

I stopped right in me movement.

"Somehow quite fitting."

Eric winked at me before turning back to Sookie with a smirky smile.

A warm tickling sensation spread inside my stomach and the only thing I was able to do was blinking and starring at them both with my mouth wide open.

I was prepared for pretty much everything as a reaction, including a fight, murder or manipulation, but flirting?  And me (or my traitorous body) reacting to that?

I decided those two... well my two friends would be the wrong word...  their whole body language was screaming something different. Maybe Sookie was in a relationship with Billy (which she told everybody and everyone whether they wanted to hear about it or not) but between Eric and Sookie  was some strong sexual tention as well. But those two didn't seem like they where about to fight. Fuck? Maybe. But fighting didn't seem likely.

Sookie, who seemed to have sensed or read my confusion and probably judgement, turned slightly crimson and cleared her throat.

„Not your Sookie. Bills Sookie!", she clearified and straightened right back up. "And you hate Smalltalk!"

Eric drew his eyes together ever so slightly when Sookie called herself 'Billys Sookie', before leaning forward and whispering something into Sookies ear. Surprisingly she turned red even more and something I recognised as fattery crossed her face. I watched the whole situation unable to comprehend it. Contradictory feelings were fighting inside me and the accompanied confused caused my tears to dwell up. My breath grew flat.

Sookie turned to me, a frown appearing on her forehead. Eric followed her gaze with interested, his eyes focusing on me once more. I swallowed down the lump growing in my throat.

Oh please, Jesus. Not again.