Jareth supposed that abandoning Sarah on the cold floor of the throne room wasn't the most honorable thing he could have done. However, he wasn't feeling particularly chivalrous at the moment.
He was currently experiencing the painful spasms that came from unsatisfied lust—and it was all Sarah's fault.
What was she doing there in the first damned place? In the middle of the night . . . with the faint light of that candle throwing her figure into beautiful silhouette under the white material of her gown.
And that was probably not the best thing in the world to be thinking about at the moment—in his condition. He raked his hands through his hair in frustration and slammed the door to his chambers closed with a resounding bang that echoed down the hall.
Gods below, he wanted her so badly he was shaking. He could still taste her, sweet as sugared violets melting on his tongue.
She belonged to him now, though he let her forget it, and though any other Fae would have taken what he wanted, Jareth couldn't do that. She would not have forgiven him, and like it or not, that mattered.
By right, Sarah was his property—a tradition that had originally been introduced to protect captured human wives from being killed or stolen by other Fae—but Jareth had a difficult time seeing her that way. She was Sarah Williams, the lovely, defiant, infuriating girl who bested his Labyrinth, his most prized creation. She was not an object.
Yet, she belonged to him. She belonged to him in a way that had absolutely nothing at all to do with tradition or property. He sensed it now, as he had sensed it those ten years before when she stood against him.
And he resented like hell that her acceptance of him had been forced upon her by desperation and circumstance rather than desire and belief.
Jareth snarled viciously and slammed his fist into the wall beside his bed. He heard the dry sound of snapping bones and felt the satisfying agony that closely followed.
That was certainly one way of beating back lust.
The only problem was that it healed almost instantly, and he was left with a raging erection and an empty bed.