J&O Pt.II
Cat and Mouse
Cat and Mouse
Something woke Owen. He was lying on his stomach a sprawling tangled mess in his sheets. His pillow was shoved up against the headboard and his arm served as the thing supporting his head. He must’ve been tossing around. Owen rolled over and stretched his arm out to feel for his guest.
Well. Apparently, he was alone. But he hadn’t gone to bed alone.
Glancing over his shoulder, he frowned at the alarm clock. 3:49 a.m. He swatted at the device. It fell face down so he wouldn’t have to look at the time. Barely three hours since they’d gone to bed.
When had she left? Sneaking away in the night, as it were.
He never minded before if a sexual encounter ended without obligatory post-coital cuddling or inappropriately tender sleepovers. In fact, he was usually relieved.
But the memory of his latest orgasm rushed over him. That release and the accompanying euphoria, the intimacy, the violence of the act sort of paralyzed him for a moment. Had it been real? The memory was as vivid as a wet dream made his stomach turn a nervous flip.
When had he started caring whether she came or went? If he was honest with himself he had cared from the very start. But he wasn’t honest.
Feet kicking away the sheets, Owen sat up in the bed. Since when did he start feeling sudden attachments to women who made him cum? To be fair, it was short-sighted of him to attribute his feelings to that one stand-out moment with her. His feelings of growing attachment were more a culmination of many shared moments with her - cum moments and otherwise. A gradual building like a slow crescendo, or the lead-up to an orgasm. In a sense he was forgetting the significance of the foreplay in the afterglow of release. He was forgetting the little touches, moments, and looks that together would form his attachment to her.
Owen snatched up his glasses and stalked downstairs for water. He didn’t want to think about her anymore. Thirst. It was a bodily need he could easily relieve. Owen was good at responding to his body’s desires.
On shuffling feet, he entered his kitchen and opened the fridge for one of the bottles of water chilling there. With the door propped open against his hip, Owen stared blankly into the fridge caught up with his previous thoughts. Finally he reached for a water bottle and twisted off the cap with a satisfying crack and gulped.
“A penny for your thoughts Agent Hart?” A sudden cheerful query from the darkness.
Owen startled. He hadn’t noticed her sitting there in the dark casually lounged on his countertop by the stove. Her tail and bare legs swaying as they dangled over counter. He blinked in surprise for several heartbeats halfway leaning into the fridge. There she was licking at strawberry ice cream heaped on a spoon with the carton hugged to her chest. Owen didn’t answer but felt his eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. After all that mental self-flagellation and unnecessary disappointment. There she was just sitting on his counter asking him questions in the dark.
“You’re letting all the cold out.” Julianna observed with a melodic sweetness in her voice before continuing to lick at the ridiculous mound of ice cream she’d put on the spoon. She seemed to be whittling it down to a size reasonable for her mouth. She wasn’t just getting it down to size but was also sculpting it with her tongue. Making it into a perfectly round mound.
Owen let the fridge door swing closed. Julianna clicked on the stove light for him, knowing he couldn’t see in the dark as well as she. The spoon disappeared into her mouth to finish off her sculpture.
“I have enough pennies, thanks.” Owen replied curtly to her initial inquiry about the subject of his thoughts. He was embarrassed that he’d been caught off guard. And embarrassed by this feeling of relief at finding her there.
She had just been snacking all along, not sneaking.
She pouted a little bit, her pink lower lip pushed out just slightly. After arranging sleeves too long for her arms she then worked to gather another scoop. “What about some ice cream for your thoughts?” She waved the spoon in front of her in a way she must have figured was enticing.
And it was.
Owen stared at her impassively until her shoulders dropped a little. It was her way of signaling resignation that he wouldn’t play along with her games, as he so rarely did. Sighing at her dejection, Owen crossed the kitchen. “Fine.” He said.
She brightened too much, too eager to play her game. Owen captured her wrist forcing her hand towards his mouth as if to claim the serving of ice cream while she protested. “I take my payments up front.” He said but only licked the ice cream once, just to show her he could have as much as he wanted when he wanted. A fitting metaphor for their whole relationship.
That’s the way it went. A game of cat and mouse. She seemingly wanted more of him, chasing after him like a cat. He’d give in and give her what she wanted for a while, let her think she was closing in. And then he’d turn a corner and lose her. It was game of trying to control her expectations. Without pushing her too far away. Trying to control his feelings. While still giving into his desire. Fuck it he was playing pretend. Pretending as if he could control any of it. Pretending he wasn’t already completely captured and at her mercy. Pretending as if he weren’t already in love with her.
Ultimately he released her wrist, gazing at her with a self-satisfied smile on his face. He’d just noticed that she was wearing his Covenant uniform top. The same one she’d unbuttoned from him and pushed off his shoulders. The garment engulfed her frame in a way he found very pleasing. Something about the way it reinforced their relative size difference.
“So what had you letting the cold out of your refrigerator?” She prompted him as it seemed he wouldn’t give up any thoughts without provocation.
“You.”
“Oh?” She cocked her head the spoon remained poised between them. The one ear caught the light from the stove. With the light behind her ear he could see delicate veins through her skin like serpentine rivers on a map. He wanted to touch her ear. He knew it felt like velvet.
Owen took one more step towards her, until his pelvis pressed against her knees, so he could tower over her while explaining his thought process. “Imagine my surprise to find a very entitled cat -” he said, giving into the desire to touch her, he fingered the tip of her ear between his index and thumb. She leaned towards his hand but he took it away just as quickly. Playing cat and mouse. “This cat slinked away in the night to perch herself on my counter and finish off my ice cream, without even inviting me. And my houseguest, it seems, also helped herself to my dress uniform shirt, as if it exists purely for her comfort and not for my employment.”
Owen sensed a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. It was hard to tell in the dim lighting.
She averted her eyes, staring down into the carton. “Does it bother you?”
The swift way her playfulness turned to uncertainty pained him a little. But hadn’t he wanted it that way? To keep her feeling just uncomfortable enough. For what? What was the point? He couldn’t answer that.
“No.” The word itself wasn’t reassuring but he moved a hand beneath one of her knees, coaxing the limb with a firm touch to curl around his hip. He pulled her toward him until his hips pressed into hers. She complied both legs wrapping around his back. “Luckily for you I find all this rather arousing.”
She seemed somewhat encouraged by this.
He brought his hand from beneath her knee to wipe at a bit of ice cream at the corner of her mouth with his finger. He licked his fingertip, tasting the sugar more than the strawberry flavor. “It’s very...domestic.” Poor word choice. He cringed. He’d fucked up the moment for sure.
She even wrinkled her nose at him not liking being called domestic. “What does that mean?”
Owen shrugged he wasn’t sure himself. It wasn’t exactly the right word, but it wasn’t entirely wrong either. It had the right connotation: familiar, endearing, but mostly intimate.
“You look like you belong here, I guess. Or belong to me.” He fingered the lapel of his shirt she wore between thumb and index almost as he had her ear. He didn’t know where this was coming from. It just sort of came out not only as the right thing to say to her just then to please her but also true to what he felt.
She silently held up the spoon of ice cream for him in reward for sharing his thoughts. He opened his mouth allowing her to feed it to him, making no move to take the spoon from her as he had before. Their eyes met as she slid the cleaned silver from his mouth. There was something in her look. An indescribable special gleam that he suddenly felt a desperate need to keep seeing. Was it really for him? He wondered if he looked at her that way, whether their eyes were like mirrors set face to face.
“If I look like I belong here, then why were you surprised to see me?” She tested. Cat pawed at the prey. Was it still alive for more games?
“I thought you left.”
She scraped at the ice cream again. “Did you want me to leave?”
They hadn’t really established whether sleeping over was okay, much less what they were even doing with each other. He never expressed anything to the contrary regarding her staying the night. And she’d never acted as if she wanted to leave.
“I don’t mind you staying.” He said knowing it was as wishy washy an answer as he could really give.
“You don’t mind.” She echoed pausing her scraping to stare back at him with an expression that mingled together an expectation for disappointment with longing. Like want mixed with the certainty of pain. It was a look he’d unintentionally cultivated with his games.“So you don’t care one way or another?”
How could he rescue this? “That’s not what I meant… I kind of get panicked when you aren’t where I expect you to be.”
“So you don’t care whether I come or go just so long as I am where you expect me to be?” She echoed him again, her tail flicked, brushing against his leg. The cat was not pleased.
He was trying to say, I want you, I need you, stay with me. Without saying any of those words.
“That’s not what I said.” He repeated. Annoyed at not knowing how to give her whatever she seemed to need from him. Annoyed that she seemed to need anything at all. Annoyed that she made him feel responsible for her need at that moment.
“That’s not an answer.” Her voice was quiet and strained.
Owen sighed and started to pull away from her, but her legs tightened slightly, holding their hips together. “I don’t know what you want to hear.” He sighed in frustration. When had their game become serious?
“I don’t want to just hear what you think I want to hear.” She pressed. On the surface they seemed to be speaking of short term sleeping arrangements. But it felt to Owen that bigger things were being established.
In growing tension, they studied one another for a long painful silence. At last Owen moved, he took the spoon from her and fed himself a bite of ice cream. Call it a deposit on his forthcoming confession. “I want you to sleep here.”
Her look was almost skeptical like she was trying to ensure he wasn’t just saying what he thought she wanted to hear.
Owen drew her into him. The carton, and her hands holding it, pressed between their chests.
“I like when you sleep here. With me.” He added ‘with me’ in case it wasn’t abundantly clear. “Okay, Julianna?”
She rested her head on him so that her cheek pressed against his collarbone and nodded her okay.
Owen couldn’t bear this growing feeling. This newfound nagging longing, that was other than lust, that she had rooted somewhere inside him. He suddenly pulled away from her and away from that feeling. Cat and mouse again.
“Besides I can’t let you leave when you have yet to pay for what you’ve stolen from your employer. The ice cream. The clothing.” He said changing the tone, back to joking. He was better at that.
“Of course not.” She agreed flatly and slid from the counter. She sidled past him to put the ice cream back in the freezer.
“How about I put it on your tab, then?” He offered sensing she didn’t want to play cat and mouse anymore.
“I thought you liked payment upfront.” The freezer snapped close. A billow of frosty air. And she turned back towards him.
Owen had followed her across the room and was standing behind her while she put the ice cream back. When she turned towards him again, he shoved her up against the fridge. The length of his torso along hers. Bottles of beer clinked somewhere inside. “I’m amenable to a payment plan.” He breathed against her ear. Hands on her curves. “That’s an exception I’m willing to make just for you, Julianna.”
Bitch, I'm limited edition.
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