Living Dead in Dallas

be seen with you so she might be asked to join that supposed sex club here in Bon Temps.”
    “Sex club?” Bill said with interest, not stopping in the least.
    “Yes, didn’t I tell you . . . oh, Bill, no . . . Bill, I’m still worn out from last . . . Oh. Oh, God.” His hands had gripped me with their great strength, and moved me purposefully, right onto his stiffness. He began rocking me again, back and forth. “Oh,” I said, lost in the moment. I began to see colors floating in front of my eyes, and then I was being rocked so fast I couldn’t keep track of my motion. The end came at the same time for both of us, and we clung together panting for several minutes.
    “We should never separate again,” Bill said.
    “I don’t know, this makes it almost worth it.”
    A little aftershock rippled his body. “No,” he said. “This is wonderful, but I would rather just leave townfor a few days, than fight with you again.” He opened his eyes wide. “Did you really suck a bullet from Eric’s shoulder?”
    “Yeah, he said I had to get it out before his flesh closed over it.”
    “Did he tell you he had a pocketknife in his pocket?”
    I was taken aback. “No. Did he? Why would he do that?”
    Bill raised his eyebrows, as if I had said something quite ridiculous.
    “Guess,” he said.
    “So I would suck on his shoulder? You can’t mean that.”
    Bill just maintained the skeptical look.
    “Oh, Bill. I fell for it. Wait a minute—he got shot! That bullet could have hit me, but instead it hit him. He was guarding me.”
    “How?”
    “Well, by lying on top of me . . .”
    “I rest my case.” There was nothing old-fashioned about Bill at the moment. On the other hand, there was a pretty old-fashioned look on his face.
    “But, Bill . . . you mean he’s that devious?”
    Again with the raised eyebrows.
    “Lying on top of me is not such a big treat,” I protested, “that someone should take a bullet for it. Geez. That’s nuts!”
    “It got some of his blood in you.”
    “Only a drop or two. I spit the rest out,” I said.
    “A drop or two is enough when you are as old as Eric is.”
    “Enough for what?”
    “He will know some things about you, now.”
    “What, like my dress size?”
    Bill smiled, not always a relaxing sight. “No, like how you are feeling. Angry, horny, loving.”
    I shrugged. “Won’t do him any good.”
    “Probably it is not too important, but be careful from now on,” Bill warned me. He seemed quite serious.
    “I still can’t believe someone would put themselves in a position to take a bullet for me just in the hopes I’d ingest a drop of blood getting the bullet out. That’s ridiculous. You know, it seems like to me you introduced this subject so I’d quit bugging you about Portia, but I’m not going to. I think Portia believes if she’s dating you, someone will ask her to go to this sex club, since if she’s willing to ball a vampire, she’s willing to do anything. They think, ” said hastily after looking at Bill’s face. “So Portia figures she’ll go, she’ll learn stuff, she’ll find out who actually killed Lafayette, Andy’ll be off the hook.”
    “That’s a complicated plot.”
    “Can you refute it?” I was proud to use refute, which had been on my Word of the Day calendar.
    “As a matter of fact, I can’t.” He became immobile. His eyes were fixed and unblinking, and his hands relaxed. Since Bill doesn’t breathe, he was absolutely still.
    Finally he blinked. “It would have been better if she had told me the truth to begin with.”
    “You better not have had sex with her,” I said, finally admitting to myself that the bare possibility had made me nearly blind with jealousy.
    “I wondered when you were going to ask me,” he said calmly. “As if I would ever bed a Bellefleur. No, she has not the slightest desire to have sex with me. She even has a hard time pretending she wants to at some later date. Portia is not much of an actress. Most of the time we are together, she takes me on wild goose chases to find this cache of arms the Fellowship has stowed here, saying all the Fellowship sympathizers are hiding them.”
    “So why’d you go along with any of this?”
    “There’s something about her that’s honorable. And I wanted to see if you would be jealous.”
    “Oh, I see. Well, what do you think?”
    “I think,” he said, “I had better never see you within a yard of that handsome moron again.”
    “JB?