Chapter Seventeen
Being an animal had always given Ludo an advantage, in his own opinion. For one, you were never bothered by moral dilemmas; you simply did as instinct dictated. For another, your senses were greatly enhanced; the world flowed around you in ways that it didn't, couldn't, for humans, giving rise to a sixth sense. Being a cat again gave him something that he had sorely missed: a calculating intelligence, the natural wisdom of a predator.
Ludo hid in the shadows of the kitchen, watching his human with sharp eyes. The air was charged with something oppressive, the way it often felt before a violent storm. His claws slid out of their sheaths slightly, hooking and kneading the towel that he had dragged into the shadows with him. Something wrong was about to happen to his human, and he was determined not to let whatever it was win.
Sarah came into the kitchen and Jareth nearly choked on the coffee he had been drinking. Her hair was shining and damp, falling past her shoulders in a riot of glistening curls. And she was wearing his clothes. Of course, he had guessed that she would, since her only other option would be to wear what she had come over in, which would have included one of his shirts anyway. Even so…
She had found one of his few t-shirts, the dove gray material was soft and worn from age, tumbling to the tops of her thighs. He didn't exactly remember owning a pair of field shorts, but he must have because she was wearing them, leaving her shapely legs relatively bare. She wasn't wearing a bra, Jareth noticed—not sure whether to send up his thanks to God, or whether to curse the Devil for his temptation—and he could easily make out the generous and unsupported curves of her breasts. It was unfair, really; the best he could do was walk around without a shirt on, which was tempting but blunt, but Sarah could go prancing through the house without a bra, which was simply inhumane because he now knew exactly what that flimsy t-shirt was hiding from his hungry eyes. Overall the effect was devastating: a young, freshly showered woman being swallowed by the larger clothes of her lover.
His clothes. His lover.
"Breakfast?" Sarah interrupted his thoughts before they could go spiraling any further into territorial musings.
He nodded his head toward the table, not yet trusting himself to speak. What to say, anyway? They had been apart for less than half an hour, each minute a small eternity, and he hadn't the slightest clue if he had thought about anything other than murdering the toaster or how sexy Sarah probably looked in the shower.
"You really need to go grocery shopping," she said, making an attempt to fill the drowning silence.
Jareth joined her at the table, handed her a cup of coffee, and gazed at the meager meal. His laptop might declare him to be a world-famous author, but his refrigerator declared that he was either a starving artist or on a hunger strike. "I could always steal food from you," he replied before he could stop himself.
Sarah stared at him from across the table. It was obvious that the poor man was giving himself a hard time. When she had first walked into the kitchen he had looked like he was ready to jump her, but a reserve had settled in and she had seen him thinking. Now he had let slip words that could hint at a future when it was obvious he didn't know what to really think of the situation.
Well… that just wouldn't do. Sarah Williams had a mission and a growing soft spot for the blond writer. She was still leery about the Goblin King, especially after deciphering his message, but he and Jareth were theoretically the same person so she was sure that everything would work itself out in the end. Her novelist just needed a little nudging away from heavy thoughts; he had commitment issues, but it wasn't like she was sitting at his breakfast table asking him for an engagement ring.
"So that's the operation you run," she teased, "ply a girl with sex and then raid her kitchen? You do that too often and I won't have any food either, you know."
He looked bewildered at first, but Sarah saw the exact moment he finally understood. It was flippant comment charged with undertones. 'It's okay,' was the message that laid underneath the gentle barb. 'You don't know what to make of any of this, but I still want you around.'
The atmosphere lifted after that; Jareth returned to the teasing and playful man that she was used to, though, after the first few snide remarks that drew a snarl out of her, she wasn't too sure if that was a blessing or a curse.
Ludo slunk out of the kitchen, deciding that even his human deserved privacy when he was with his mate. It wasn't like danger was going to come bursting through the window, not if Sarah was around anyway.
Silent paws brought him to the front room, where he curled up on an errant chair to keep a watch on the door. It wasn't easy being a self-appointed guard-cat, the urge to sleep or hunt dust bunnies was often overwhelming, but something in his furry brain told him that things were not well with his human. Out in the murky cosmos that stretched beyond the door of his home, something stalked the blond one.
It was simply unacceptable, he sniffed regally; his pride as a cat would not allow anything to come between him and the cozy lap he had grown accustomed to.
Sarah began to wonder if they were ever going to talk about the new dimension of their relationship before they ended up having sex again. Or rather, for the third time, she amended.
She wasn't even really sure why it had happened this time. Doing dishes was not, traditionally, considered a seductive action. They hadn't been kissing or even talking about sex, like before. The only way the mood could have been less conducive to intimate relations was if a giggling toddler had been sitting in the room. One minute she had been drying a plate and the next minute he had been pressed against her.
She nearly dropped the plate when she felt Jareth wrap his arms around her, tightening the steely limbs until she was tucked firmly against his front. "What are you doing?" she asked, trying to hide the breathy note that slid into her voice whenever he touched her.
His head popped over her shoulder, and he growled, "I'm being jealous of a damned piece of crockery." Sarah was about to ask him what exactly that was supposed to mean, but he had started to nuzzle his lips up and down her neck, and she would have been the worst sort of liar if she didn't admit that it distracted her immensely.
In Sarah's, admittedly limited, experience, men generally had chapped lips, and it had always annoyed the hell out of her. But not Jareth; his lips were like warm velvet as they smoothed over the length of her throat, parting occasionally to get a taste of her skin. She might have made a noise then, whimpering at the feathery light caresses, because he growled low in his throat and began to gently pry the plate out of her clenched hands.
"Let go of the plate," he murmured carefully, the words vibrating against her sensitive flesh.
She shook her head. "I'm doing the dishes," she stuttered dumbly, not quite processing how he had gone from meandering in the kitchen to necking. "Besides, you're just going to do something perverted."
His lips paused over a spot atop her shoulder. "I should think it would be even more perverted if you insisted in holding on to that thing." The image that rose to her mind was, to put it mildly, laughable. "Besides, you like perverted."
The plate disappeared from her hands and landed in the half-filled sink before she felt herself being turned around. Sarah wasn't sure if it was catching sight of the large bruise she had left of Jareth's shoulder from the night before or the heated look that crackled through his gaze that caused it, but suddenly her mind was filled with every last detail from their previous encounter—the way he felt, the way he tasted, how the muscles in his thighs and lower back had flexed in the most mouth-watering way possible, that adorable little rumbling noise he made as he came down from the high of climax—and it was impossible not to want him again.
It went just as quickly, just as urgently as the night before had; they barely even made it to a couch in the next room over before they were trying to tear each other's clothes off. Not even a few minutes after that he was sliding into her, hot, hard, and wonderful.
Time seemed to stop as he began thrusting, and for a moment the urgency cleared, leaving her to simply enjoy the gentle ebb and flow of pleasure. It was a natural rhythm, slow but inexorably leading toward an end. Desire, though a sluggish fire in her blood, was beginning to build. He was behind her this time, hands clenching and massaging the flesh of her hips, and, though she missed the solid strength of having one of his shoulders to latch onto, being caged by all that lean muscle was exciting.
His hips shifted, finding a new angle that tore strangled mewls out of her throat. The rhythm shattered, and her urgency came flooding back.
Sarah wasn't sure how exactly she became aware of it—in the harder, more erratic way his hips thrust forward; how he leaned over her back, trapping her against the sofa and let his wicked teeth and lips lock on the side of her throat; or perhaps in the way that the very air around them seemed to be charged with something electric—but she knew that if she could look over her shoulder right now it would be the Goblin King looking back at her. After a while he released the skin from his mouth and moved his lips to her ear. He began to whisper to her; first in languages and words she didn't understand then in sensual, possessive words that she did.
It was both the single sexiest moment of her life, and the single scariest. She could feel the power behind her, building and swirling through the air, trying to find a way out of whatever prison it was trapped within, and the man who controlled it was riding her body. But that very same power seemed to caress her skin, to stroke heated paths between her thighs and up her back, held her hands clenched to the sofa, but encouraged her to move back on him when he thrust forward. Pleasure danced from synapse to synapse, and all the while was the whispered promise that it could be this good forever.
It wasn't long before both of them spiraled out of control.
Which led Sarah back to where she was now: slumped over Jareth and a sofa, and pretty certain that they had just been shot back to square one.
Jareth, for his part, almost had the grace to be embarrassed. Becoming jealous over the gentle, meticulous way she rubbed the dishes dry was definitely a new low for him. Then again, Sarah could hardly breathe without him becoming aroused, so it wasn't that much of a low. The woman did something witchy to him. He was also almost embarrassed by the fact that they'd had sex on his couch like a couple of horny teenagers—someone like Sarah deserved the textural heaven of silk or velvet sheets—but was mostly prevented by the knowledge that he had done it in much worse places in the past. Honestly, the fact that they were even in his house was a mark in his favor.
The actual sex was a little hazy, just like last time, more of an overriding feeling than a series of actions. He did remember the words though. Some of them had been little more than sounds, no more comprehensible to him than they had likely been to her, but after that… Jareth wasn't entirely sure what had possessed him to say such things, to try and claim a woman's soul with words as he claimed her body, but they had sounded right.
And still did.
It was time to face facts. He had gotten jealous of an inanimate object, and not even one that she had been showing a particular fondness for. What would he do if he ever saw her with another man, potentially one that she liked? He'd go crazy, that's what. The very thought left a bitter and angry feeling swirling inside Jareth's head. Things were moving fast, life was changing, but was that necessarily such a bad thing if it meant having his drugging little nymph?
Sarah stretched lazily, muscles protesting the movement. "We'll need to talk eventually, you know," she sighed. "This is the second-"
His hand wove through her hair and fisted in the silky strands, tilting her head up to meet his heavy lidded gaze. "My lover," he said simply.
"I never hold a man to pillow-promises," she replied. "Some things just get said in the heat of the moment and it wouldn't be fair to hold anyone to it." That, and the fact that he hadn't exactly been the same man when he had made said promises. "So we really need to talk about this."
Jareth shook his head, tightening the arm wrapped around her waist, anchoring her to him. "My lover," he said again, simple but with an emphasis that could not be mistaken.
And, slowly, Sarah began to realize that was him talking things over. Somewhere between sex and the Goblin King, Jareth had made up his mind about their relationship and it seemed to be weighing in favor of His Highness's agenda.
Ludo hunkered down in a laundry basket, ready for a nap. Whatever his human and Sarah had done while mating had staved off the namelessness that was stalking them. It wouldn't stay away for long, these sort of things never did, but long enough for him to relax his guard.
Byron slept, curled up in a shadowy corner of Sarah's porch, and dreamt of a young boy, with golden hair and flashing blue eyes, running through a very long maze.
A/N: This chapter was brought to you by The Happy Head-Smashing Desk Corporation; supplementing your writers' block with massive headaches since the creation of the phonetic alphabet!
On a side note: yes, I do know that cats don't have mates the way wolves or ducks would, but it was the easiest way for Ludo to relate that concept, so I kept the word. P.S.- I think velvet would actually give you rug-burn in places you'd rather not get it.
A very large thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far. I never imagined this story would become so popular!
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Disclaimer: Henson, Fraud, Bowie; take your pick. Also, Ludo's narration at the beginning bears some resemblance to The Librarian from the Diskworld novels, so a nod to Terry Pratchett as well.