Chapter Seven: Kiss-Bruised Lips.
It didn't really register at first. Sarah's mind knew that Jareth was kissing her, but her lips hadn't quite caught up yet. She floundered for a moment, trying to catch her balance from having been yanked to her feet, which only made her lean into Jareth more as he wrapped his arms around her, perfectly content to provide her support; her lips quivered for a moment, still not sure what to do.
A buzz flared to life somewhere around her toes and began to make its way upward.
Jareth's hands closed securely around her waist; he lifted her up, spun both of them around, and seated her on the table that had been at his back. The table only helped bridge their height difference marginally, he still had to lean down to kiss her, but in all of his rearranging his lips had never left her own. It was kind of impressive, especially considering that the table still held their dinner and he had managed to seat her on an unoccupied space without really looking.
The buzz rippled through her belly mercilessly and continued northward.
For a moment he bent over her awkwardly, his thighs pressed against her raised knees, straining his kiss just a bit. He growled lowly, one hand wandering from her waist to trail across her thigh and settle on her knee. His long fingers curled over it, his thumb and pinky easily settling into the little hollows on the backside of her leg. At first he seemed content to merely hold her like that, but she knew what he meant to do, so when he began moving her leg to the side she fought him. Unfortunately, her action was more on principle than any actual desire, so it was a halfhearted battle, at best. He settled between her thighs comfortably and growled again, obviously pleased with the new angle and the contact it afforded him.
The buzz made it all the way up to her head, and Sarah finally snapped.
She threw one hand around his neck and fisted the other in his shirt, pulling him as close as possible. Restlessly, she worked her lips against his, searching for something that she couldn't put a name to, and when Jareth played at the seam of her mouth she readily opened to him. His tongue swept in, not conquering or exploring, but playfully engaging in battle with her own. He tasted, not surprisingly, like magic, a spicy vitality that she couldn't get enough of.
Jareth felt like purring. Sarah's skirt had bunched up around her thighs, revealing a mouthwateringly silky expanse of skin. Quickly, without breaking the kiss, he stripped off both of his gloves and began to trail lazy circles over the delectable flesh. The first jolt of purely physical contact was electrifying; pleasure skittered painfully intense along his nerves. It was half the reason he wore gloves so often, his hands were damn sensitive and, if Sarah's little jump was any indication, their pheromonal effect hadn't worn off any.
Her feet hooked around the back of his legs, their hips grinding together for the briefest of seconds. She let out a quiet whimper at the contact and, as the sound vibrated low in her throat, he realized he wanted to hear her make that noise as much as possible.
Damn, but the woman got under his skin! Every second they were together he wanted her even more; he could almost understand why the Jareth of five years ago had been so blindingly desperate to possess this woman. As it stood, he wanted to taste every inch of her, learn her little quirks and turn-ons, find the secret spots that made her quiver and mewl. He had a grim idea that intimacy with Sarah Williams could get a man addicted, that it lead down a road that ended in wedding bells. At the moment he didn't care, not when one little hand was weaving through his hair while the other began to unbutton his shirt. It was magic, pure and simple, that snapped between them, a power fueled by explosive chemistry, drawing two halves together.
She broke the kiss, her dark head leaning down to explore his chest. He watched her, his hands still idly stroking her thighs and drawing light shudders out of them both, watched as her hand came up to trail against his belly and her mouth lowered to nip his collarbone. Her wicked lips closed over one of his flat nipples and teased the sensitive skin exactly the way he wanted to tease her. The pleasure built up along his spine, his hips unconsciously grinding into hers until they were both panting and she was damn near biting him in retaliation.
At that moment he decided the world could go to hell and it would not tear him away from this woman, so when the doorbell rang he was perfectly content to ignore it. Sarah, however, jumped back as though she had been struck. He groaned and grabbed her shoulders as she started to pull away from him. "Ignore it," he pleaded huskily, but he could already tell that, for her at least, the moment was gone.
"I can't," she replied, clearly irritate, though he wasn't sure if it was at him or whoever was at the door.
Jareth resolutely refused to move—if she was going to end the sinfully fun time they were having then she was going to have to work for it. She gave him a looked that was both annoyed and lusty when her failed attempts to get away from him merely ground their hips together some more. A growl caught in her throat as the bell rang again and she pulled a move that he would remember to his dying day.
She scuttled backward on her adorable rear, then lifted one leg and swung it around his hips, as though dismounting a horse. He barely avoided getting kicked in the face, but the scuffle told him two thing: one, little Sarah was quite the limber lady and, two, her panties were a red lace that definitely merited future inspection.
Karen Williams survived life by taking each day as it came. She had lived that way for many years, though it had once been out of choice rather than necessity. Her own mother had squelched the impulsive nature right of Karen, had ruthlessly destroyed the fantasy that had lingered behind her young eyes and replaced it with knowledge and etiquette. The days had been long and torturous back then, but she had survived them by them by never thinking about the future beyond what was necessary. She had been groomed into the perfect little socialite and, once the deed was done, she had been so far removed from fantasy that she'd forgotten how much she had hated her mother for taking it away.
And Karen had tried to do the same thing to Sarah, had tried to pull the girl's head out of the clouds and get her focused on friends and boys. The younger woman had always rebelled though—it was simply in her nature—and in her rebellion she had decided all their fates. She wasn't too clear on the details, but she knew Sarah and Jareth had met long before Karen had ever learned about him; had played through that red, leather-bound book that she wished none of them had ever read.
Her boyfriend.
She snorted. That was such a misleading title. Oh sure, at first he had seemed wonderful—a gorgeous, foreign boy who knew how to take Sarah's temper in stride. He had been polite and amusing, had regaled them all with stories of his family. The only thing that he hadn't mentioned was that he was from another world. That he wasn't, in any sense of the word, human. Karen still shuddered to think of the wild creature she had finally seen him to truly be. And Sarah had known, the whole time, what she had been sitting next to, what she had been exchanging light and easy touches with. Had that been why she had always seemed so tense when the two of them were near the family? There had been some real affection there, real attraction, she was sure of it, but more and more Karen was beginning to understand that it had been in spite of Sarah's better judgment.
She couldn't fault the girl for caring, for trusting some part of her heart to the man that had led to all this trouble. Love made a fool out of everyone, and a woman like Sarah would never have been able to completely resist the alluring charm of fantasy. But now her stepdaughter was closing herself off from the world, her son alternated between two distinctly different personalities, and both her and Robert were terrified of what a repeat performance might do to their children.
That was why, when the woman crossing over the threshold of her house changed from a dusky mocha coloring to a gentle green, Karen screamed.
Leshia covered her ears and stared at the human curiously, wondering why the screaming had started so early. She had expected it, honestly, the first time she mentioned Jareth or Oran, names that the woman would have recognized. But, obviously, Mrs. Williams had developed an aversion to the supernatural, because she was only ten seconds in the door and already the woman was exhausting her vocal chords.
She understood, she truly did, but a small feminine part of her couldn't help but be offended. Leshia took pride in her appearance. She was short compared to her boys, but well proportioned, her skin was a glittering sage and her hair fell in long tresses of hunter-green woven through with small silver leaves. She was everything that the forest demanded: lush, green, and subdued in nature. Never had she considered herself scream-worthy, unless it happened to be her husband.
As Karen Williams began her second round of screaming—honestly, that was just taking it too far!—Leshia's gift finally took root. An innate ability to exude serenity always came in handy, especially when living with four equally mischievous and stubborn men, but for the woman standing before her it could only take the edge off. Her fear and anger were still apparent, but she was no longer trying to bring the roof down. Briefly she wished that Oran were with her—they always worked better in tandem, serenity and compassion—but this was a conversation best left to mothers.
"I come in peace," Leshia tried not to snicker when she realized that she probably sounded like something out of one of those awful alien movies the humans so loved to watch.
Sarah smoothed her skirt down, fixed her shirt, did her best to finger-comb her hair, and tried really hard not to look like a woman that had been about two minutes away from finding out how sturdy her dinner table actually was.
It probably didn't work very well.
She could feel her pulse thundering just beneath her skin, skin that suddenly felt several sizes too small, craving stimulation, friction. And even if she managed to hide all that, she could never hide the most obvious sign of all: kiss-bruised lips.
Mentally, she was somewhere between thanking whoever had interrupted her and Jareth and thinking about their interloper as a devil-spawned cretin. Jareth's arrogance had finally been well placed; she had challenged him to empty her mind and he had. She would have seen the act through to the end this time; he had taken his gloves off and the minute his bare skin had touched her thighs, she had started burning. She had experienced physical desire before, but his touch had sent her crazy with the sheer intensity of it. Lust, addicting and pure, had wanted nothing more than their clothes to disappear and their bodies to be as close as possible. They would have had sex, after all these year on her dinner table. It would have been phenomenal sex, she was certain, but the stupid table would have always reminded her of what had happened, and she would have regretted it. Perhaps not the act itself, she was confident that he could please her like no one else, but she would have regretted that it happened because there was still so much between them that just wasn't right yet. So, with a paradoxical mix of gratitude and grudging acceptance, she answered the door.
Leo Knight stood on the other side, a hopeful look in his brown gaze that made Sarah want to roll her eyes. Leo was a library patron who happened to live in the same apartment complex and had taken an instant liking to her. She didn't know how many more times or ways she could say 'no' before he finally understood that she just wasn't interested. He was a very nice man, and she enjoy talking to him, but he only ever saw her professional side; innately, she knew he would never be able to handle her temper.
Leo smiled brightly at her. "Hello, Sarah."
She opened her mouth, wearily about to exchange meaningless pleasantries, but before the words ever left her lips an arm dropped around her waist, pulling her into the solid chest at her back. Sarah swallowed roughly; the edges of Jareth's still unbuttoned shirt enclosed her shoulders, wrapping her in his warmth while his hand played with the belt loops at her waist. His blond head lowered over her shoulder and her neighbor paled slightly; she could almost picture the haughty look Jareth was probably giving him.
Warm lips pressed to her neck in a quick kiss. "I missed you," he murmured in a tone so decadent it nearly made her knees buckle.
Leo was fixated on them as though hypnotized and she knew, without a doubt, that though Jareth was talking to her, he was staring the other man down like a wolf. And, if it weren't for the fact that her brown-eyed visitor looked so comically horrified, Sarah would have dug an elbow into the gut of her 'lover'.
Jareth nuzzled around her ear a bit, then asked Leo, "And you are?"
The poor man stammered for a minute, still trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what he thought he knew about her. "Leo Knight," he finally answered, darting a look between the pair before him. "I'm a friend of Sarah's."
"Really?" Jareth asked in his familiar, mocking, Goblin King voice. "I'll bet I'm a better friend, though." And with that, he shut the door in a stricken Leo's face.
A/N: Yay, I'm actually early with an update! I wasn't going to write until later, but the long weekend sort of crunched up my week and I have quite a bit of free time on my hands, so I figured I might as well.
Please Review!
Disclaimer: Labyrinth and all the characters thereof do not belong to me.