Everything In This World
By Viv
*~*~ Part Twenty ~*~*
Chloe took a deep breath and pressed the door bell.
Her highly imaginative though logical plan had suffered a minor detour, owing to the fact that she had so generously coached Clark into trying to salvage his relationship with Lana - thereby making it highly inappropriate for Chloe to go barging over to Lana's house right now, asking for the lame school assignments that she had missed on Friday. Some quirky Chloe instinct told her that it would take Clark a really long time to get to the point; she bet that he would take even longer to actually start grovelling for Lana's mercy.
Which had made her reorder her simple yet brilliant plan.
So now she was outside Lex's ancestral mansion after having passed an impressive pair of unlocked iron gates and feeling strangely excited and foolish at the same time.
Chloe had never thought she would be doing this - this crazy flirting, kissing thing with Lex. And now she was scared to death of the consequences. What if he told her that yesterday had been a complete and utter mistake, the pinnacle of stupidity ... the height of insanity? She knew that she would just nod dumbly and wish the ground would swallow her up, and then run home and cry like a gushing faucet. And then hate him with a passion of a thousand suns, and she really didn't want that to happen.
"Yes?" A young but strange butler type man inquired as he opened the grand double doors at the front of the mansion. He looked around before his wandering eyes landed on Chloe's head, her anxiety making her shuffle her feet. "Can I help you?" He asked, his voice gravelly and mechanical-like.
"Ah ... I'm here to see Lex. Er - Lex Luthor. Mr Luthor." Chloe corrected herself, inwardly groaning in disbelief at how obscenely young - and she couldn't emphasise this enough - how stupid she sounded.
There was a slight pause, as if he was trying to remember something. A second later his stern demeanour melted into a welcoming smile, and he held the door open for her to enter. "Miss Sullivan. Mr Luthor has been expecting you." He smiled as he offered to take her coat.
"What?" Chloe was jerked momentarily out of her awkwardness by that disclosure, her coat falling to the floor ungracefully by her feet. "How ...?"
The young man smiled enigmatically as he unobtrusively picked up her coat and led her down a long hallway, making enough twists and turns to bewilder Chloe's not-so-great sense of direction.
She looked around her. She had known from her first visit with Clark that Lex's place had been big, but it was only now when she actually had to walk in it, navigate around it, that she could truly appreciate the size and grandeur of the Luthor ancestral mansion. After, it hadn't really helped that she had only seen the area around the library before getting tossed out like a giant rag doll.
Now that she wasn't distracted by the whole getting thrown out of the window thing, she took a moment to absorb the immensity of Lex's place. It was big. Excruciatingly, unrealistically, out-of-this-world big. It was also intimidating and a whole bunch of other stuff along those lines, and did she also mention big?
Before setting foot in this house (she was using 'house' very loosely of course) all she had been scared about was impending rejection by Lex. But what scared her more now was the intrusive realisation that this was the world that Lex came from - the world that he was from. Not until this moment had Chloe realised how many worlds apart she and Lex truly were. How could she even hope that, even if Lex felt the same way about her as she now obviously did about him, they could even make things work?
Chloe felt her claustrophobic vortex of fear and anxiety churning in her stomach, and suddenly she wanted to run. Which was unfortunate because they had now jerked to a stop in front of a pair of floor to ceiling French doors. Chloe stared dumbly at the sunlight that filtered easily through them, blinking in confusion.
"Mr Luthor is just through there." The young man indicated, and without further ceremony disappeared from sight.
"Thanks ..." Chloe sighed as her voice trailed into thin air. There was a definite queasiness that had settled into the pit of her stomach, and she irritatingly wondered why she had insisted on having such a huge breakfast. So okay, she had been monumentally hungry and all, but that was no excuse for her abysmal lack of foresight.
She tried to shake off the negativity that now pervaded her mind. She had a feeling she was making too much out of this. This is stupid Chloe, she chided herself. She was seeing Lex, her ... whoever he was, not going to face a firing squad. She had more guts than this.
She took a deep breath and swung open the door.
Fresh, cool air and the heavy fragrance of a well-kept garden assaulted her over-heightened senses, soothing her fraying nerves a little. That was, until she saw Lex's unmistakable form whirl around at her entrance.
"Hey." She greeted him awkwardly, failing to stick her hands in her pockets owing to the small fact that her pants actually didn't have any pockets. She let her hands fall awkwardly to the side.
"Chloe." Lex recovered quickly from his momentary surprise, getting up from the stone garden bench he had been sitting on. He walked quickly towards her with a determined look on his features, causing a blinding moment of panic to engulf Chloe. This was it, she thought, strangely mollified. He was going to tell her that it had all been a mistake.
But all her fears were dispelled in the instant that his lips descended on hers. His mouth widened to allow his tongue to savour her unique taste, a mixture of delicious excitement and surprised passion, while his arms entangled themselves in her hair and body, alternately massaging and arousing her senses.
It was a big, giant screen movie screen kiss, and it knocked Chloe's remaining breath completely out of her system. So much so that she faintly considered whether she should motion for Lex to stop, but before she could do that unthinkable act the other side of her still-functioning brain ridiculed the absolute idiocy of that idea. Ask Lex to stop this, her bemused mind wondered dimly. Right.
Her hands wound up around his waist and back, before reaching his bare head, eliciting an actual moan of pleasure from Lex. Did she just do that?
"Wow." She said breathlessly as they finally broke apart, wondering whether the excited drumming of her heart was capable of developing into a coronary, albeit of the extremely pleasant variety.
"Hi." Lex returned cheekily, obviously enjoying her delighted confusion. "You're a little earlier than I thought you'd be."
"Ah ..." Chloe blinked several times, flustered beyond belief. "What was that ... Hey, how did you know I would come? I mean, here?"
Lex reached for her hand, using it to tug her to the bench. "It was a logical deduction." He pulled her down beside him, gently wrapping his arms around Chloe's small frame as he moulded his body against hers. She instinctively froze at the contact, but soon found herself relaxing into Lex's gentle embrace.
Off her questioning look, he elaborated. "I've noticed women have a habit of clarifying things." He paused as a servant seemingly materialised out of thin air next to him, holding out a tray of fresh fruit and blue bottled water. He offered a bottle to her, to which she unwittingly wrinkled her nose. He nodded indulgently, understanding permeating his stance. "What kind of coffee did you want?"
"Just ... a latte." She glanced at the servant. "Whatever. No trouble, I could just have water ... " She trailed off, waving her hands awkwardly after the man as he left, unused to ordering any sort of beverage in any place besides a restaurant. It again brought to mind the differences that existed between hers and Lex's worlds; how they would work around that remained to be seen.
If they could, she correctly herself silently.
She turned her eyes back onto him as he continued. "Women seem to have this need to ... define things. You being you ... I just knew you'd come, if only to make sure I hadn't forgotten what happened yesterday."
"Oh." Chloe didn't know whether she particularly liked the feeling of being read like an open book, even if Lex were to tell her that she was more of the Shakespearian variety than the Mills and Boon variety. There had been many things said about her by her friends, but no one had ever said she had been easy to read. That Lex could so easily anticipate the workings of her sometimes convoluted mind scared her.
"So what was that -" she gestured between their lips, prompting him to smile, "about?"
His grip tightened on hers imperceptibly, and if possible he leaned even closer against her. She caught a faint tang of expensive cologne and apple-scented soap, which she caught herself unwittingly savouring. "That was about saying what needed to be said in a more ... efficient way. Admit it, you would have been dancing around the real issue until I made you come right out and say it." Chloe blinked, acknowledging the truth of the statement. Damn it, he was completely right. And here she had been ridiculing Clark's non-straightforwardness, and all the while she had been master to his disciple.
It irritated her in a distinctly immature way that he had felt so confident about his conjecture. Here Chloe had been, tossing and turning about the possibilities about their possible future, while Lex had probably gotten a good night's sleep without developing any worry wrinkles, seemingly secure in the knowledge that he could read Chloe like an open book, even if she had wanted herself to be closed. Which she didn't, but that was beside the point.
The servant came back with a latte, just as Chloe had ordered it. She silently took the proffered mug, fuming inwardly. "Okay, if you're so smart - tell me what happens now?"
Lex shrugged, in that patently confident yet casual way of his. "I'll take you out tonight, and we'll have a great time." He smiled irresistibly at her, and Chloe felt her annoyance draining away.
Damn that sexy-as-hell smile.
"You know, I probably have to catch up on my assignments tonight." She smiled innocently up at him. "After all, I kind of missed school yesterday and I don't want to let my grades slip."
Chloe could almost hear him smiling into her hair. "School work can wait." He said decidedly, snaking one arm around her waist and burying himself into the crook of her neck. Soon he was nipping his way down the contours of her neck, sending shivers of pleasure careening up and down her spine with his lips, before winding back up, plunging into her mouth.
At the back of her mind, Chloe wondered at the complete lack of awkwardness between them. Even with Clark there had been a certain level of teenage clumsiness, that split-second hesitation of where to place their mouths for optimal lip-lockage, where to place their hands and so on.
But being with Lex, having him kiss and tease her in such a way seemed way too natural to be believed. But it did feel natural, and Chloe for one was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
(c) August 2002