Archive of Our Own ^beta

Her foot bobs off-beat to the music, disjointed like the snatches of words and sentences she overhears among the din of music and laughter. The energy is in her legs, but it doesn’t quite match that of the party. Swish, goes the fabric of her pant legs against each other. She swirls her wine around in her glass and takes a sip, looking over the rim at the smiling, laughing faces of the minglers.

On the couch, alone, leaning sideways against the arm, she spies a Dracula eagerly chatting with a Freddy Krueger by the kitchen. The house party is large and the house is larger but she still recognizes most of the people, even with their masks and makeups and costumes. A star or two stud the place, but most are those like herself… the half-way successful, long-time clinger-onners of the crowd. Show biz is rough, that’s what her dad always used to say.

A loud laugh snaps through the air, but the owner of it is hidden from Sarah’s eyes. She adjusts her thick, itchy headband where it digs painfully into the soft spots behind her ears and looks around. A kid sits on the other end of the couch, wearing a sheet with holes cut into it for a costume. The ghost has a pumpkin bucket on her lap, and every minute or so, sneaks candies under the sheet to eat. They’ve both been sitting there for a while, silent observers.

Sarah sips her wine again, then leans in the direction of the kid. “Hey,” she calls.

Ghost-eyes turn to peer at her. The couch is long, with many sections of cushions. Sarah smiles. “Get a good haul tonight?”

The kid pauses for a long few seconds, then nods.

“That’s cool,” Sarah says. “What’s your favorite candy? I always liked those sweet gums… Dubble Bubble, right?”

But the ghost shrugs, and then gets up and walks away. Disappearing into the crowd.

Sarah sits back into the armrest with a wince. Kids had never really liked her. She scratches at her headband again. Sip. Sip. Swish. Scratch. The music pulses, heavy and ambient.

She sighs and glances at her wrist-watch. She uncrosses her legs and recrosses them. She wonders when is too early to leave. She’s busy smoothing out the wrinkles of her pants when the shape of someone stands in front of her. Pausing there, letting darkness roll over her. She sees trousers and leather shoes.

Her eyes slide up. Lips parting, she goes still. Something catches in her chest. He casts his shadow over her, blocking the distant kitchen chandelier light with his head. There’s a halo effect. Lion-man. His mouth is stretched out in a crooked, sly smile. He catches her eye.

Deep, smooth voice. Like that of a singer. “Hi, bunny.”

Her hand flies up to her headband. Bunny ears. A last minute choice at the grocery store. The energy of youthful Halloween spirit had abandoned her at some point over the years. Of course, there were no kids to keep the magic alive. No ecstatic, spirited husband to buoy her either.

Without a word, he smoothly sits down beside her, close enough that their knees knock together. She follows the movement. Her eyes spy the bare-chested way his shirt is left unbuttoned at the neck. A peek of collarbone and the line of a strong, noble-esque combination of neck and jaw.

“You,” she says. She can’t keep her eyes off him.

“Yes.”

His hair is fluffy, cut short. His face is the exact same. The way he looks at her seems different. She can’t put a pin on it. A rock song from her youth ambles up next on the playlist. The guitar riff has the aging actors of the party in high, nostalgic spirits.

She looks down to her wine, then back up. His arm presses warmly into hers. Likewise, his knee…

“Are you real?” she asks.

Somehow, that wide smile stretches further. It had always been his smile that entranced her. Among other things, certainly, but mostly the smile. Small, arch smirk. Growling, toothy. Dreamly-evocative, domineering slightness when dancing. The thing is precarious as he.

“As real as you are.” His foot nudges her own. He makes work of observing her. She’s been scrutinized on the big screen for years, but never has she been so closely seen.

“I thought for a long time that I dreamed you…”

“It has been a while,” he agrees. He leans in closer, enough that she can smell the scent of him. An understated cologne of spice and coolness. Tobacco smoke, too, which warmed. Different from when she was a girl and he’d been all magic and windy moors. His eyes go amused. “Are those wrinkles I see?”

It makes her bristle. She looks sharply away. She sees him watching from the corner of her eye. Arch smirk remaining. Please, I need my brother back, she remembers having cried to him once, to a tilt of the head, amused, the quirk of the mouth, observing.

Sipping her wine, she says, “What are you doing here?”

“I was invited.”

“By who- whom?”

That smile. “A friend.”

He has one hand on his lap and the other on the back of the couch. He crosses his legs, like her. He cocks his head curiously as she blinks at his barely-an-answer.

“You’re not here for me?” she presses. This time it is her who leans forward. “Or Toby? He’s not a baby anymore, so...”

He sighs. “Believe it or not, Sarah, you aren’t the only mortal I know.”

She flushes hot, hides it with a gulp of wine. “So you just happen to be here? In my neighborhood? Among my friends?”

“Quite right, my dear.” It is as easy as that. “Say, Sarah, how many years have you gathered up in all this time?”

The way he says her name…

She frowns a little. She observes the lines of his own eyes and around his mouth. It feels strange on her tongue when she says, “Jareth.” His eyes go bright, delighted. Pleased.

“Jareth,” she says again. “It’s rude to ask a lady her age. Didn’t you know that?”

He laughs. A breathy, short, humorous thing. Mouth stretched wide, all teeth visible, head thrown back enough she can see the entirety of his neck. The strong column. “Not in my world,” he then says.

“But we’re not in your world,” she points out.

“No,” he says. He leans in. The fast beat of the song matches her heart. He looks at her heavy-gazed. “But you wish we were. You’ve always wished to be in my world instead of yours.”

It catches her off guard. He’s right, but she doesn’t want him to be. Would that be the answer to her long, lonely life. Success, in a form, she had found. Happiness, on the other hand…

Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth, stubborn. “Not always. I beat you. I went home.”

“Oh,” he says with another of those laughs, “of that I won’t argue. How could I ever forget?”

They stare at each other for an intense, loaded moment. The house is in full swing. They are silent and alone among all which contrasts that.

She looks away first. “I’m forty-eight.”

“And when you… beat... me? How old were you then?”

She sips her wine. Rolls it over her tongue. Then, she swallows it down. “Fifteen… How old are you? Were you?”

He shifts in place. The room is dark but she can make out every detail of his face, of him. “Who knows. I’ve lost count.”

“Well, since you don’t have a concept of age, I should tell you… fifteen is really young. Creep,” she says, but the corner of her mouth lifts up, amused.

“Dreamer,” he says back.

She looks him over. He wears a loose button-up shirt, black pants, and loafers. On his wrist is a sleek watch. No fuss. He put about as much effort into his costume as she did, even less. “What are you supposed to be?” she says. “It’s a costume party, Goblin King. Not a luncheon.”

“Where did your imagination go, Sarah?” he tuts. He gestures down the front of him. “Quite evidently I’m dressed as a mortal man. And it seems as though I succeeded too.”

This is what gets her to laugh. The smile peels wide across her face and she leans forward bodily, then back, full of amusement.

He reaches up and tugs at one of her bunny ears. To that, she goes still, hyper-aware. When he lets go, the tips of his fingers graze the side of her face. Barely. The faintest touch. Like she had imagined for years and years as she lay in bed at night, senses pricked by the certainty of the Goblin King right there, hidden from view, touching…hiding…ready to pounce if only she called out. She never had.

His smile slips a little. “I’m surprised with you. I remember you playing pretend in the park. The costume-crazy girl. What happened?”

She breathes in. He sees through her; it makes her uncomfortable to be seen. “Nothing happened,” she says. “I just… I grew up.”

He catches her eye. Sunken-with-age, darkened, glittering green eyes and strange, mismatched, piercingly-magic blue ones. There’s a whole world between them only they can see.

His tongue dips out, swipes over his lower lip. It leaves behind a glimmer of moisture. Her dreamy memory conjures up images of glitter and lip gloss as well as dark, seductive looks. He pulls out a neatly rolled cigarette and a box of matches from his shirt pocket. He sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lights it, the end flaring orange. His cheeks suck in, go hollow and dark, when he takes a drag. Skeleton-man. He breathes it sideways out of his mouth, in the other direction, and he says musingly, “But did you really?”

The smoke curls around in the air, mixing with the disco lights. She stares at him, swallows. He stares back. Then, he offers her the cigarette.

She takes it between two fingers.

She doesn’t know how to answer him. Instead, she places it between her lips and sucks in. She knows she should stop. It’s a vice like any other. She’s noticed lines around her lips lately, even from her more casual, social smoking. She finds an ashtray on the table beside the couch and places it on her lap. She passes the cigarette back to him, and then him back to her. He watches her mouth when she sucks on it. She watches his.

They chat there, on that couch, in their own little world, for a little while. It falls into easy, but odd conversation. She can’t quite wrap her mind around it. The Goblin King… She’d longed for years that he would appear again in her life, certain the time would come eventually. And yet… thirty-three years passed… nothing.

He sees her soul, sees through her, but he knows nothing material about her. He asks about her job, her life. She mirrors his questions back and he answers. There’s an intentness about him. He discovers her bit by bit. He wonders after husband and kids, of which she has none. She wonders the same, of wife and kids. He slyly shakes his head. She doesn’t know much of anything about him, other than what he truly is. It’s more than anyone else in this room can boast, however.

At some point, she fidgets. She feels young again under his gaze. He watches her roll her words over and over on her tongue before she finally says it. She confesses, under the ease of their strange friendliness… “I always hoped I’d see you again. But… then I lost hope.”

Crestfallen, she whispers. “Why didn’t you ever come?”

There’s a crease in his brow when he looks at her now. The cigarette is long gone. His fingers tap on his lap like he wants another one. He shakes his head. “You never wished for me, Sarah. I can only come if I’m invited. Wished for. I’m the Wish King. You know that.”

Her eyes lower. Her wine is long empty, set on the couch-side table.

His voice is deep, sad. Vibrating like a lament, and frustrated. Put out. “Why didn’t you ever call for me?”

She swallows. It’s a pained feeling. She looks up at him. Smiles sadly. He understands. He rests his hand on the ball of her knee, warm thing. The veiny, translucent back of it flexes.

“How fortuitous tonight is, then,” she says. “To run into old friends.”

There’s that pleased crook of his lips. He looks at her in a fond way. Friends. He tilts his head. He’s close enough now that his arm on the back of the couch wraps behind her. His fingers play with the ends of her hair.

She leans in, slowly. Close enough to go cross-eyed if she looks at him directly. The cologne-spritzed, smoky, male scent is stronger now, and their noses touch. She pauses, heart thumping, but he doesn’t move an inch. Just breathes. She goes the rest of the way. She kisses him.

His lips are warm and soft and the touch of them sends a rush of warmth through her. A heady, heavy pit in her belly. The kiss is barely a kiss… instead, a long press. They breathe together.

But the hand from her knee comes up to rest on the side of her neck. The tips of his fingers tickle the sensitive skin over a final jut of spine, and they stay there for a moment before she pulls back, overwhelmed. They are close enough that their open-mouthed, desirous breathing intermingles in the smoky air. So close that his strange eyes look crossed in her vision, but still dark. Enchanting things.

She’s caught off guard, but she doesn’t want to see him gone. “Jareth,” she breathes out. “Do you have any plans tonight?”

His hand at her neck makes a gentle, warm squeeze. “No.”

The tips of their noses nudge again and she shifts. “My house is near.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Would you like to see?”

“Yes.”

His hand slides from her neck to grasp her hand. It’s a warm shock. Her skin is unused to touch, if not to desiring it. In one smooth movement, he stands and pulls her up with him. He doesn’t let go of her hand and lowly, over the mess of music and conversation, he commands her, “Come.”

They head through the throng of people, a sideways, hand-holding chain. She laces her fingers in between his and feels the thump, thump of the music in her heart. She watches the back of his head, and the place where his shirt and his skin meet. She sees the soft scratch of shortened blondish strands against his neck. Man.

At the coat check by the front door, they drop hands long enough for Jareth to hold her jacket open for her and for him to throw on his own. He places a black fedora hat onto his head, tips the coat attendant for the both of them, fey hands handling rumpled green paper bills too easily, and then takes her hand once again.

Stepping outside, the music fades away to a muffled beat. It’s chilly outside, but it is autumn and it is New York so it makes sense. Jareth’s hand warms her up.

Her house is just down the street and they walk to it, hand in hand, and in silence. It takes about five minutes to arrive on her doorstep and every once in a while they look at each other and share a smile. Something secretive. Under the lamplights of the damp, chilly Halloween street, his face is full of shadows. The shadow king.

He leans against the porch rail, watching her as she unlocks the door. Then, he follows her in, swooping his hat off and closing the door behind him as she presses the code into the alarm system.

There’s not much to see from the foyer and so he shifts from foot to foot beside her as if impatient to observe her interior, private life. Sarah takes his jacket and hangs it up on the coat rack, his hat too. She balances on one foot at a time, unstrapping her heels and then kicking them aside to tumble over on the floor.

When he removes his own shoes, they turn out to be the same height. She grins nervously, beckons, and he follows her, bare-footed padding, into her living room.

“Here we are,” she says.

He stands in the middle of her space, taking it in. One hand rests on his hip and the other has fingers tapping his chin. Deep contemplation. Sarah doesn’t know what to make of it; she fidgets. She wonders what he sees.

Her house is the smallest on the block but she thinks it is too large for just one person. Her home for many years now, it shows. The living room is a clutter of bookshelves and artworks. The sofa is a garish sage green color and well-worn. That and the carved wooden coffee table she’s had with her almost two decades now. It’s hard to move on… they’ve treated her so well, so far. She gets so easily attached to things… to dreams, too.

The paint on the wall is beginning to chip… she hasn’t redone it since she first moved in. The possibility of kids had been on her radar, then, with the two spare bedrooms offering plenty of space for a growing family. But that had changed. Years ago, her dad had helped her convert them to an exercise room and an office, all for her, only for her.

He glances sideways at her, a twist of the lips. “It’s very… you.”

“Is it?” she wonders.

“Mm-hmm.” He walks over to peer at her bookshelves, bending at the waist and tilting his head. Is he familiar with Perrault, Carroll, Carter, and the like? What of Nabokov, his creepy Humbert highness handsomeness having allured her so at fifteen.

Left stranded in her own living room, she shifts. “Would you like something to drink?”

He stands up straight, glancing over his shoulder. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Water?”

He nods. “Please.”

She lingers for a moment before turning and padding into the kitchen. She makes herself busy pouring two glasses of water, and when she returns to him with them in hand, finds him observing a large painting framed upon her wall. Funny that he should notice this one, of all the others. Or perhaps not so funny and instead, fate.

She comes to stand beside him and hands him the water. He nods in thanks and takes a sip. It draws her attention to his throat, where the apple of it shifts. Sarah bites her lip, watching him as he takes in the painting.

“This is a curious one,” he says, gesturing.

She agrees with a hum. Then, she adds for clarification, “It’s Toby’s. I mean- he’s the artist who made it. Most of these are.” She points to the other artworks hung on her wall.

To their late father’s confusion and lawyerly consternation, both of his children had grown up to be the artistic, creative sorts. Toby makes his comfortable living nowadays as a fantasy illustrator. His works are the whimsical, brightly-colored types, often with cheerfully red-cheeked fairy children plopped atop mushrooms, trees and moons with caricature faces, and the occasional shadowed goulish, goblin beings hidden from the casual eye within the dark brambles of his forest scenes.

The one in question is small, the smallest one of all of them. A greenish-purple hued painting of a young girl and an even younger boy, holding hands on a long, neverending stone path that twists through dark, looming trees. If one knew exactly where to look, one would see the glowing eyes dotted throughout, watching, and the shadow figure in the corner, a crystal glinting.

Jareth’s eyes flick to her, eyebrows raised. “You told him about it?”

Her mouth twists wryly. She shakes her head. “I never mentioned it. Not once. I guess it left an impression on him.”

“I’m surprised by the two of you. Most don’t remember.” His eyes catch hers. “Least of all for thirty-some odd years. That’s a long time for you humans.”

For some odd reason, his look makes her bashful. It’s considering and seeing. Her tongue darts out to wet her lip. His eyes follow.

“I didn’t always believe,” she points out.

He shakes his head… this doesn’t matter to him. A non-factor. “You always remembered.”

She isn’t sure what to say to this so her eyes trail back to the painting. She takes a sip of her water, then glances back to he who never looks away. A gleam of his teeth show and he reaches up, tugging at the end of one of her bunny ears. “Cute,” he hums.

A flush overtakes her. With one hand, she reaches up and removes her headband. She lets out a short, embarrassed sort of laugh, and tosses the bunny ear headband onto the couch. It bounces once before laying flat.

“Hah. I really don’t know how I forgot about those,” she says, setting her water glass onto a bookshelf. Her fingers find themselves in her hairline, rubbing away the now-apparent tension. The space behind her ears is particularly sore.

“You were overwhelmed by my presence,” he says, light toned, turning to face her.

“As if.” She rolls her eyes, smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, but she knows he’s probably, at least a little, right. She rubs her thumbs into her temples, and then drops her hands.

He laughs, enough that his shoulders jump with the movement. “There’s my champion.”

His. It is just the turn of the phrase, she knows, but she finds this comment surreal indeed. Her fingers pause in their motions and she stares at him, where he stands just there, real-life, close.

He’s amused by her silence, she can see that in the crinkle of his eyes and the shape of his mouth. He looks away only long enough to set down his water glass on the bookshelf next to hers. The only thing that distinguishes them is the slight imprint of a plum-colored mouth on the rim of one. She’s surprised the lipstick has lasted this long, through all her wine and all her kissing. It draws her attention to his mouth, where his lips appeal her with the barest berry smudge.

He takes one step into her space, and then another. She looks down to see one of his feet planted between hers. Bare, she is reminded once again. It makes for a tamed, husbandly sort of picture. It evokes a new, yearnful feeling deep within her.

His hands land warmly on her shoulders, forming a shape over her shirt. Thumbs splayed over her collarbone and fingers in the direction of her neck. They sweep inward and up, hot, lively touch sending a furious red flush through her body. Her mouth parts open and she finds his eyes. His fingers rake into her hair, run over her scalp. Sarah shivers. The smile has melted from his face, replaced by a look altogether burning.

His thumbs find their place behind her ears and he strokes the bruised bone. His attentions make her weak, leaving her neck to go liquid, folding under his careful touch. She lets his hold guide her closer; he directs her into him. She lands with her hands on his chest and her lips meshed with his.

When his touch sweeps again, warm hands mark their path down the back of her neck, over the line of her shoulders, and down her arms. Goosebumps prickle, bringing hairs to stand upright, at attention. She sighs into his mouth, mouth parting open in her affection.

He takes advantage. His tongue licks into her, finds hers. All of a sudden, his hands seize around her waist and he drags her lower half into him, lining them right up. Her arms wrap around his shoulders and she breathes heavily through her nose as his kissing takes a turn. It is he who drives the pace, sucking, licking, but she returns the favor. He savages her mouth wetly, hotly, until Sarah is not but a quivering mess in his arms.

They pull back for breath. Panting, her heavy-eyed gaze takes him in. The flush on his high, noble cheekbones, the swollen, shiny wetness of his mouth, the dark eyes and wide pupils that observe her.

They are drawn close together, the warmth of pelvises and bellies and chests pressed against one another. She smiles, barely, and leans in. A kiss to the corner of his mouth. A kiss to his cheek. A kiss to his cheekbone, his jaw, and the place right before his ear.

His hands squeeze into her flesh and she kisses the side of his neck, the long column, where tendons are held taut. His skin is hot to her lips and she is close enough to see his pulse, rapid, like hers. She nuzzles his skin, grazing her mouth wetly against him. His breath catches and he holds her tighter. It’s a hug they end up in.

In a whisper, and into his ear, she says his name.

“Yes?” he returns, voice dropped low. There’s a gravelly quality to it. She melts further into him. His warmth and his smell folds her in, dozing her up. She never wants to leave.

She licks her lips, laughs breathlessly. “You’ve slipped me a potion or some such.”

His face is in her hair, his nose nudging atop her ear. “Have I?” he drawls. His fingers sneak under the hem of her shirt. The more of her skin he touches, the less of herself she has control over.

“Mm-hmm.”

It is his turn to kiss her neck. He licks a stripe, sucks. “I think,” he says, lightly, and punctuated by another kissing lick, a soft bite, “that you just want me.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh, yes, Sarah. You’ve wanted me for such a long time, haven’t you? The lack of man, of children. The fairytale art and books that make up your life instead. You still play pretend for a job. You’ve never been able to let it go. Not fully.”

She pulls back and he lets her, arms loosening, uncoiling. She still clutches to his shoulders, though her mind and heart race. “It’s not only you,” she says. “I… it hasn’t been thirty-three years of pining. Give me some credit.”

He reaches up and brushes some of her hair away. “No,” he agrees. “But it’s been enough. There’s a mark left here-” he lays the flat of his hand over her heart, “-which is there to stay.”

“And - let me guess - to get rid of it, I really ought to fuck you?” She clucks her tongue, tilts her head. But she’s not really offended. His body is warm and, truly, she expects nothing less. Her antagonist. It was what had always drawn her to him. Sparked her curiosity as a girl. A meanness, unlike that of the pigtail-tugging boys of her childhood, which presented its own deep allure of danger. She’d wanted him to love her above all others. To treat her cruelly, and yet adoringly.

He throws his head back to laugh, body shaking with it. Mouth stretched out wide in his crooked-teeth grin and throat exposed to view. The laugh is deep and he gives her a suggestive look when he’s done with it. “Well, I do think it would help. What do you say? Hmm? Shall we get to it then?”

She rolls her eyes. His hands rub patterns onto the bare skin under her shirt. His expression gives way to something more serious. “Sarah,” he says, with an earnestness. “I want you too. Don’t think I don’t.”

Her heart flutters. “What? Don’t tell me you’ve also got a mark on your heart from all that.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” he says. He teasingly pinches the fleshy part of her waist, and her belly jolts at the teasing pleasure. “But it’s not every day that a little mortal girl beats me at my own game, is it?”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back. A moment passes such as this.

A flush to her cheekbones, she says, boldly murmuring her confession, “... I do want you.”

“That delights me to hear,” he says. He leans in and nudges his nose to her ear, tilts ever so subtly his pelvis into hers. Sarah’s fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. He means to remind her. They want each other, then. That’s settled. Where’s your room?

She pulls back, steps away, but grabs his hand. She squeezes it and tugs. Wordlessly, she turns and leads him to her bedroom, feeling all the while that the rush in her body is too intense for her great age. Too much excitement. Her doctor would disapprove, what with her blood pressure on the rise. Stress. Manufactured as it is, not having to worry about sick family or bills to pay or getting children to and from school and all their various activities, it has her up late at night, fretting. Over what… she still can’t be sure.

The hallway to the bedrooms is dark as night but she doesn’t bother flicking on the light. She’s lived there long enough to walk blind throughout the house, no accidents. She glances a few times back to Jareth, whose eyes and mouth gleam in the darkness. He’s silent as they arrive outside her bedroom door, which gives a squeak as she pushes it open. She should fix that. She thinks she has a can of WD-40 somewhere in the garage, left by her father who, when still alive, used to do all her various home repairs. She hadn’t moved very far from home, too homesick during relatively short month-long productions in Los Angeles to make the great, permanent leap from East to West Coast.

Without her father, the house crumbles bit by bit, year by year. She lacks the motivation and the knowledge to do it herself. And inviting strangers into her home to fix the problems only makes her nervous. Privacy, one of her highest virtues. She’s felt that way since she was very young.

Now, she invites a stranger who is not a stranger into her space, one more personal, more vulnerable than her living room. Here, too, she avoids the overhead light and instead drops his hand to circle the bed. She flicks on the bedside lamp. It casts a warm, faint glow about the room. Not beaming harsh against the dark night shining through the windows, nor too dim that they could not see one another. He’s a picture in the world she made for herself, bathed by soft light and shadowed by the night.

Jareth stands by the door which he had shut behind him and Sarah’s eyes linger over him as she reaches for the window curtains and pulls them shut. He takes in the room. The rumpled bed covers and the evermore artworks on the walls. She has more photographs in here, mostly of Toby and her father, though a few of her mother appear here and there. Two lengthy bookshelves encompass the free walls, filled with neater stacks of books and knick-knacks. These are the favorites, the precious things she’s carried throughout her chronic, protracted life.

He approaches the bed, fingers reaching down to brush against the soft green blanket. A cedar chest of things rests at the foot of the bed. Sarah walks past him to the dresser across. She feels his eyes on her as she removes her necklace, earrings, and watch, depositing them into the jewelry box her father had given her at eighteen. She stands there, turns her head ever so slightly.

There’s a slow whisper of wind and then a presence right behind her. Breathing, warmth. His hands rest upon the fleshy parts of her upper arms and he squeezes. She lets out sigh, tickled by the fingers that go stray, dancing over the exposed skin of the back of her neck. He toys with the keyhole button that fastens her blouse together at the top.

“May I?” he murmurs, breath sending the baby hairs of her temple fluttering.

“Yes.”

There’s a snick and the flaps of the shirt fall apart. His hand makes quick work of exploring the new, exposed skin. Her head falls back and his shoulder catches it. She turns her head so she can see him. There’s the noble jaw and flaring nostrils.

She’s made aware of his hands once again when they appear at the hem of her shirt, playing. Her head lifts up, as do her arms. He tugs the shirt up and over her head. She knows not where he discards it, only that her skin pricks in the cool air. Warm hands find their place over her bared torso.

He kisses the side of her head, rubbing his palms over her belly, her sides. His fingers brush against the satin-covered wire of her bra. She reaches behind herself, arm snaking its way up between them, and she unsnugs the clasp. It gapes open at her back, and it is Jareth’s hands which find the straps and smooth them away. The bra falls to her feet, leaving her now shirtless. Her nipples prick, goosebumps take over.

His hands are quick as lightning but gentle and warm as the rolling distant thunder of a midsummer storm; they sweep up over her belly and over her breasts. She exhales sharply. His hands are strong enough that as he palms them, touches them, feels them, she is pulled back firmly into his chest. To touch her like this… she hears his breath catch.

He kisses wetly over the line of her shoulder, up the back of her neck. He admires her body with his touch, squeezing, not too harshly, but not too soft, either, as some overly gentle men have been with her in the past.

She turns to face him, seeing his eyes which feast upon her bared skin. It goes slowly but steadily, them divesting one another of their remaining clothing. First, she removes his watch, placing it on the dresser beside her own. Then, it’s his shirt, unbuttoned by her own hands and pushed back over his shoulders to flutter to the ground. She wastes no time and palm-paints her ownership over his thinly-corded muscles and pale, warm flesh. He shifts into her, raggedy breathing at the rub of her fingers down the softly-haired expanse of his lower abdomen.

He wears no belt, the pants tight enough as they are, and she unbuttons this part of him too. Unshy before her eyes, he kicks off his pants and stands bare before her, feet planted firmly. She has a look at him, and it stirs something within her. His cock hangs between them, not yet fully hard, but beginning to be. It dominates her attention, with its veined stiffening and the flushed color matching that of his cheekbones.

She reaches out to touch. In return, she gets a hiss of a breath and hips bucking ever so slightly. He’s hot in her hand, soft and yet underlain by a certain rigidity. Her thumb swirls the heavy, widened tip; it dampens. She tightens her fist and strokes him.

A low grumbling groan flutters to her ear. He catches her wrist, stilling her. She looks up at him, at his darkened eyes. It makes her giddy that this look should be directed at her.

“I want to see you,” he murmurs.

She wants him to see her too.

She releases him and, with trembling fingers, reaches for her own pants button. She undoes it, followed by the zipper. The pants are snug at the hips but wide past the knee. She was a noughties business bunny for Halloween that night. She shimmies them down, her plain, but not altogether unsexy black, satin panties arriving in sight.

The pants discarded, Jareth swirls them around and sets her down to sit at the foot corner of the bed. He looms above, nude, and her breath catches, for as she scoots backward onto the largeness of the bed, propped up on elbows, he crawls up after her, swinging cock and dark, predatory expression.

He catches her knees to still her scooting. Warm hands stroke her thighs, up, up, up. There goes that part of her too. His fingers hook into the waistband of her panties and he drags them down her legs, over her ankles and toes and then drops them over the side of the bed.

Her knees part though she doesn’t remember making such a decision, and his hands find her legs once again. He pets the soft inner skin of her thighs and separates them further. Warm, expansive hands against sensitive, private skin. It sends a shiver through her, a shuddering drop of the belly. He gazes thoroughly at her exposed body. His thumb strays from her thigh to touch appraisingly over her dampening vulva. He strokes her clit and it gives her a jolt of the knees, a surprised noise escaping her. His touch leaves her burning hot.

“Pretty pussy,” he all but growls. Sarah flushes and her knees drift closed around his hand.

He grins, wide-mouthed. He kisses an inner knee, then the other. His fingers continue their soft, barely-there caresses between her legs. “Did that embarrass you?”

When she doesn’t respond, he crawls up beside her. All-fours. The cock in question bounces around. Her eyes can’t help but straying to it. He drops down beside her, lengthwise, propped on an elbow just as she is propped up on both of hers. He hooks an arm around her waist and strokes her skin, finger pets. “Did it?”

The blood in her rushes, hard, at the gentle nudge of his hard cock against her hip and the repetitive touch of his hand. Her knees drop and she tilts toward him. By each second, he appears closer to her. “A little,” she admits. The embarrassment is already gone. “It more surprised me.”

His hand strays from her waist to her breasts. He makes no secret his pleasure of fondling her. “Yes,” he drawls, tickling her nipple with the pad of a finger. She arches, reflexively, and they both sort of drift back to lay down, side by side. She leans toward him, reaching out for the bare expanses of skin as he speaks, “That’s right. The poor thing has been so lonely… hasn’t been reminded just how pretty she is.”

The hand slides down her front, flat-palmed, a clear destination in mind. It halts.

“Stop it,” she says, laughing breathlessly, belly jumping under his touch. “You’re being weird.”

He tilts his head, a dastardly, dark smirk curving up his lips. His thumb dips into her belly button and Sarah leans in. His breath mingles with her own and he closes the distance, taking her mouth. The kiss brings them closer, flush together. His tongue pets hers, hot wet touch, and his hands stroke all over. She feels her bones going melty, liquid, each pass of his hands over her skin sending her into a state. And, of course, the ever present cock. Her mind returns to it constantly, the thing ruddy and leaking against her hip bone. Her hand trails down his chest, his abdomen, his pelvis.

They pull back for heavy, panting breath to find themselves all-together and burningly close. Never to be detached. With Jareth shifted to lay flat on his back, Sarah becomes stuck right to his side, breasts pressed bodily to his rib cage and leg hooked over his thigh. Her fingers play with the tip of his cock, which juts up against his belly. He lets out a moan, breathless, and pulls her closer into him. Her head rests on his shoulder and his arm snakes up ‘round her back, hand warm against her hip.

His free hand rubs the soft skin of the arm that pleases him. The tickling caress gives her goose-bumps. Eyes arrested, she stares at her own hand, which wraps solidly around the hard, aching thing. Swiping lubrication from the tip with her thumb, she spreads it over the length, and strokes. He arches into her hand and leaks more and more. The tip flushes red and seems to beckon her. Don’t stop, don’t stop.

She can’t look away. The pulsing flesh of the pretty pussy seeks warmth. Where her leg is hooked over his, she scoots closer, tilts her hips and ever so slightly, rocks against him, in time with her own handful strokes. The pleasure is indirect, muffled by the position and the shape of her body, but it’s enough.

Up and down, up and down. Slow, but steady. His hips buck up occasionally, hisses leaving him. It jolts her, too, the wet-smeared, pleasure-giving thigh jumping suddenly harder into her soft, aching, slowly grinding sex. The second time it happens, and the third and fourth, she lets out a gasp, followed by a moan. He settles again, hands resuming their soft touches, their occasional grabs.

He’s happy enough to let her do the work, holding her tight and offering up moral support. Then, slowly, the feeling between them is turned up. Made angsty and seeking. His abdomen tenses and untenses under her forearm and his breath comes shorter, and shorter. Lips against his chest, she murmurs, “Are you close?”

“Soon.” He grunts.

She strokes, and strokes. He hisses again. Dropping his touch from her arm, he wraps his hand around hers. Heat surrounds her from all sides. He squeezes her hand firmly, making the touch tighter. He drives the pace faster and faster, full bodied. To match it, she grinds herself harder into him. Circles her pelvis as much as she can. There’s the smooshed, slick feeling of her wet, fleshy sex against his skin. All senses enhanced.

She finds her gaze drifted up to watch him as he approaches his release. Sarah is enamored. A flush to the chest, a gritted-teeth grimace, dark eyes flicking open and closed, scrunched shut or squinted. A wet slapping sound has that bloody, heated rush in her veins take up faster, livid, fiercer energies. Slap, slap, slap.

Her mouth falls open, her tongue drifts out, slides, covetous, over her lower lip. She’s wound him up. It is one of the seconds that his eyes are open, and his gaze falls to her mouth, wet and pink, surely, and…

His orgasm shakes her, the full-bodied thing. A groan escapes him, eyes squeezing shut, mouth stretching out, as if in pain. His body bends, there’s an arch. His breath escapes him strongly, heavily, and he comes over their joined hands, where the release drips down over their interlaced fingers, and again, the angry, throbbing cock spurting painfully a splatter onto his abdomen, his hip.

He holds her hand there for moments after, pulsing hotly in her hand. Softening halfway. The man in her arms shivers from the come-down. He pants heavily and releases her hand. His cock droops slightly in hand and when she squeezes once, curiously, Jareth tenses up, oversensitized, a broken moan leaving him.

With a pleased little look, she releases him against the mess of his shuddering belly. “Was that good?” she teases, lifting her hand up between them and showing off the wet evidence of what had just occurred between them. He seizes her hand in his own, likewise marked hand. There’s a squelch. He drags her up for a kiss. That her slit slides over the jut of his hip bone makes her toes curl

“Very good,” he murmurs into her mouth. “Thank you.”

She hums, kissing back. “I should go get a towel.” Though certainly in the moment, she would be much more at ease knowing she’d done a little to mitigate the mess. She has a fondness for her belongings, after all. Doesn’t want to see them stained, though an image comes to her; future them, sooner rather than later, fucking, the slick, remaining drip of his previous release smearing with each thrust, belly to belly. It brings about a stony, scrapy shiver in her lower gut. It spreads out.

“No need,” he says. Then, in his hand, magically, must be, is his shirt. She props up on her elbow as he wipes his skin free of the mess, then his hand. He does the same for her, carefully cleaning off her fingers, taking care not to miss the webby in-between spaces. His intent, mindful attention toward her arouses her further. She wants him more than anything.

Watching him, her knees begin to drift apart, further and further. The cool air from the overhead fan whipping over her smarting, eager core which contracts for touch. Her hand sneaks its way downward, though never arrives at its destination for before it can, he notices her focus and her hand pauses in its track. Flinging the soiled shirt away, his eyes lay heavy on her skin, glad.

He grins, and he pounces.

It’s such a fast, turbulent move. A whirl of body and flashes of touch. The raucous shiver of the bed frame. Her eyes peel open to find him knelt between her legs, like before, kissing her kneecaps and the soft, fleshy skin of her calf muscle, her thigh. He has eyes for nothing but her. Her back bows and her legs fall all the way open, easily, dropping out. She’s surprisingly flexible for her great age, all those accumulated winters. It’s all the yoga, she bets. She’d gotten into it for a movie and never really stopped.

Settling to his belly between her knees, he slides his mouth further inward, leaving a wet licked trail of the private inner skin of her thigh. “Not so embarrassed now, are you?” he growls. Just before the crook of her groin, where the femoral artery is strung taut, anticipative, like her, he bites. It bruises and she gasps, body jerking. He just manages to stop her legs from boxing in his ears, firm hands prepared.

His gaze falls inward, downward. The close attention on her so soft, so desiring a part, is enough to make her moan. No longer the fan, it is his breath which causes soft, maddening sensations over wettened, aching pussy. Her hips jerk up, seeking.

His teeth show in his large, pleased smile. It remains in the crinkles of his eyes as he blows a stream of air right against her waiting sex. Sarah tenses, lets out a high-pitched breath. “Tease,” she pants, staring down at him. Her widely spread legs frame his face, fluffy-haired and smirking, strange eyes, and her breasts frame her own face, surely flushed, wanting, attracted.

He goes on about his idle, slow kissing and sucking and biting of her inner legs until she’s a writhing mess, never before wetter, and sore with want. He has her hands in a hold. The giving of her pleasure is saved only for him. Her skin becomes a smattering of red, blue-purple, and wet, shiny marks all over the insides of her thighs. She thinks he just wants her to beg. That’s his reasoning for making her sweat and shiver. Must be. For when she does finally plead, teased so far to that all she can think about is his cruel, sharp mouth sucking on her clit and his strong tongue licking her apart, driving her mad, she does it by crying out, breathless and shaking, her please, please, pleases, and she throws his name in there for good measure, to which he relents.

The first touch sends a shock through her, so strong and so full of delight, that she bows half off the bed. He insinuates himself closer, more thoroughly on the bed and among her, arms wrapping ‘round her legs, hands heavy on her sore, bitten inner thighs to keep them open. If attentions from before were maddening, they were nothing like this. The man takes his slow, teasing time.

The mad, angsty, hardened point of her clit and the liquified, throbbing, empty opening of her sex are ignored, that blasted, godforsaken goblin king man! His tongue instead licks butterfly licks, barely there, over her labia. He sucks the plump, soft outer lips into his mouth, and the nearness has her quivering.

“Please, please!” she cries out again, hands snapping down for fingers to rake into the strands of his hair. He plants an open-mouthed, wet, sucking kiss, then, right atop the center of her slit. His nose nudges that sensitive space between hood and clit. Sarah’s fingers tighten in his hair when his tongue dips out, pokes and urges and laps at her soft, bowing-to-pressure opening.

Her skin burns, the flush over her chest, face, belly like fire. Her head flings back, mouth falls wide open, eyes clench shut. Her hands direct him closer, closer, fingers clenching tight in his hair. It turns into a long, drawn out sucking kiss. The wetness he evokes drips between her thighs, a mess, mixed with his soft, sliding attentions. Slick tongue which drives a stripe decisively up, to land at her clit.

“Oh!” she gasps. He flicks his tongue over and over and over, then buries his face into her and pulls the hard, red, throbbing bud of her clit into his mouth, and sucks. Hard, delightful, pulling sucks that have her hands scrabbling, have her overwrought. The feeling builds, and builds. He’ll suck on her hard and tight, enough to have her trembling and moaning and close, and then he’ll divert, smacking a kiss and tonguing his way downward to nudge slickly at her opening. Then back again. And again.

Her belly jumps with each breath of hers and her legs trembling ‘round his ears, she holds his head against her. Her orgasm approaches this time, for real, and her hips rotate into the attentions of his mouth. His teeth scrape between sucks and he grabs her leg and hoists it over his shoulder, bowing closer in, pinning the other beneath his arm. A wide spread which allows him easy access. His free hand comes to join his mouth, attentive it too wants to be. As he nibbles and sucks over her clit and her soft, tickled labia, he circles the tips of long, slender fingers over her opening. He slides one in, making her arch. Another joins, an inside pressure that has her muscles contracting around it. He crooks them inside of her and Sarah moans.

She’s so, so close. It’s right there, just there, just beyond reach.

The kiss to her sex, which had been languorous and intense and romantic, becomes heavy, furious, a goal in mind. Her hold in his hair is broken when he tilts his head sideways, a focused angle. His fingers thrust and hook inside her and her body enjoys something to clench around, to hold onto.

He drops his weight on her downed leg and pushes her other further out. Her foot dangles over his back, toes curled up, tensed. So determined is he, under her grasping hands and arching torso and pleasingly pleased, wet cunt that he draws his knees up under him, pale, thin bum stuck up in the air. All the better for feasting, my dear. Wet, slick, smacking sounds make way between her moans, his deep nose-breathing. No more teasing, now. He doesn’t let up, holds her still, finger thrusts and mouth sucks.

Then… it comes.

She comes. Her orgasm, so long awaited, brings with it a youthful, pleasure-filled, disbelieving, high-toned, drawn-out moan. She shudders for breath through the bodily waves that take her, the flinching aftershocks as he licks subtly at her clit, used up and satisfied as it is. He draws his fingers out of her, leaving her insides quivering at the new, dreaded emptiness.

Then, he pulls back, crouched once again between her legs, resting back on his heels. Lain out flat on her back and gasping to catch her breath, Sarah’s eyes peel open to see him. Red, swollen, shiny lips. Wet-smeared, finely stubbled cheeks and jaw. The tip of his nose, too, has evidence of how ravenously he devoured her. The flush on his chest and cheekbones has returned, spread out further and further. Gazing down satisfactorily, proudly, he has the sight of her spread-out, bone-liquified legs and flushed-pink, swollen, pretty pussy. His cock perks up, at attention, hard again. At that which he had done to her.

“That… was…” she pants, then shakes her head. Are there even words? The torch she’s carried for him for so long must be the cause. Must be. His teeth show. He is pleased to have pleased her. And kingly smug. Glorious vainglorious bastard.

He reaches out and touches her there once again, to another full-bodied gasp. Burning faced and utterly enamored, Sarah blinks at him, follows him with her eyes as he crawls up beside her once again. He plops down and whisps his wettened fingers over her belly, her sides, her breasts.

“Wow,” is what she settles on.

They lay like that a few moments, or some minutes, as Sarah catches her breath, recovers from the orgasm from which quivers still coursed through her, skin sensitive and alight to every soft touch of him against her.

Then, she shifts up to sit and gropes for the discarded shirt from before. Jareth sits up with her, following her movements with his eyes, never once looking away as she scoots closer and brings up a clean section of shirt. They lock eyes. She wipes his face, gently, and says, “You really know what you’re doing.”

His lips curve just as she dabs at the tip of his nose, chest puffing a little. Ego male. “Don’t let it get to your head,” she tuts. Then, she grins. As does he. They share the elated mood for a moment and when she’s done with the shirt, she drops it aside. He pulls her in for a kiss of the mouth, tongue to tongue this time. A faint taste of herself remains on his lips and the reminder only goes to excite her.

She draws back, onto her heels, and says, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Shifting, he brings attention to his flushed-again, hard-again cock, which pops up in wait, and he leers at her, all gorgeous lordliness and appeal. “I can prove it to you.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, but when she shifts, the sopping wetness between her thighs is smeared. It tickles, itches. Her belly alights once more, at the re-recognition of the empty, aching feeling of her insides. Sore for more. She reaches out to fondle him again, the stiff, leaking thing heavy in her hand. He sighs, relaxing back. Propped up with a bendy arm behind him, his legs stretch out ahead.

Still holding onto him, she swings her leg over both of his, one movement. It has her straddling him, her knees inner thighs pressed to the outsides of his. Her toes tuck between the under-valleys of his knees and the bed. She hovers, opened up, with some distance between them, and waits.

He catches her waist with his hands and takes her in. She strokes him as her hips shift forward and forward, closer and closer. Then, close enough to give her legs a break, she rests her weight on his upper thighs and leans into him, breasts pressed into his chest. The heated cock gets trapped between their bellies, a hard line, shooting straight up. Balls and base squish into her, ridge nerving up her clit, and she sighs, grinding in. He helps.

It turns into a dirty, messy sort of thing, though slow. Her rocking her hips up and down, gliding against him, aided by her own slippy desire. She buries her face in his neck, the flush coming back, and he rocks too. It must only be a few seconds before he asks, “Did you imagine this? When you were young?”

Her movement pauses, though the reminder of their attraction remains heavy, wet, and lurid between their legs. She pulls back her head to look him in the eye. She ponders her words with a peck to his lips. “Yes,” she says. “Not quite so explicitly though.”

“No? How then?”

Her hips take up a smaller, more subtle grind, the allure of pleasure too much to avoid. She speaks slowly, careful with her words. Halfway through, she stills again. “Dreams here and there. You know, the flashy, unsustained sorts of dreams that you can barely remember in the morning except for how you felt during them. And, I guess… vague wonderings and daydreams. It was all very romantic, in my mind.”

He’s captivated by her description, that much she can see. His eyes follow her mouth-shapes as she explains; they notice her own eyes which dart away from time to time, shy-ish even as a grown woman. He has this effect on her.

“I imagined it.” He gropes at her hips and drags her into one solid, circular grind. He makes a point with his lechery.

“We know that,” she says, poking him. “Perv.” It’s a defense mechanism, of sorts, her jokes.

The closeness of him, the scent, and the heat of damp skin all over her. Chest to breasts, belly to belly, arousal to arousal. It has her vulnerable. Confessional. She licks her lips. “I… I wanted you to come sweep me away, of course. To your castle. To your world. I wanted to be yours. Fantasy man. The fairytale king. My fairytale king.”

He tilts his head curiously, eyes serious, though not grave. Observing and knowing. “But you were so stubborn,” he remembers, “You would have fought me every moment of it, I believe.”

She licks her teeth, feeling seen, more even than when he stared devouringly between her legs. This is much more serious. Her soul, of course, is. “You’re probably right.”

She draws a hand up from his shoulder to his face. Palm resting on his cheek, so high a cheekbone, she draws a thumb softly over the cushiony space intersecting mouth, cheek, and nose. The rest of her fingers draw into his hair. Her pinky nudges his ear, such a human thing, with the curved shell and soft, plump lobe. “I still wanted it anyway. At least as a dream, if not more.”

He gazes at her for a long moment, heavy, mismatched black pupils boring into her. He has thoughts she cannot read. “This dream has hurt you,” he says then, “That much I can see. I can tell. I’m the king of dreams. And wishes.”

She smiles wryly, at herself, and looks down between them. The smooshed together, pale skins of them both. Her knees squeeze into the outsides of his legs, clenching. “Don’t pity me,” she says. Insists, “I’m happy with my life.”

“I don’t pity you, Sarah.” He says her name so distinctly. The two syllables so separate, not run together. Sa-rah. It has her musing on her own name. That which she had no control over. The name was her parents’ doing, but is her. Describes her. Who she is. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.

Then, she laughs, softly. Shaking her head, she says, “This got strangely deep for… for a roll in the sack.”

He tsks, firm hands squeezing into her sides. “Sex is deep, Sarah. It’s not just about physical pleasure. It’s about connection, touch, emotion…”

He winds into her and kisses her sensitive neck, then sucks. Bites. She arches, slick slide between them never gone. His hands drop to her ass, groping, palming. He continues, “Feelings rush through you, how you feel and how you feel towards your partner. They don’t call it making love without a reason. Though… if you tell me you’ve never experienced that pleasure, I will pity you.”

His words excite her, as they come deeply, wantonly. His own desire, in word, in touch, and in hard, explicit penile proof has her squirming atop him. “Don’t worry,” she laughs breathlessly. “I have. Though you should remind me. Definitely.”

He grins and slaps the outside of her thigh, just the ends of the fingers biting, and with his help she rises up. As she moves, the under-side of his cock drags against her slit, a moving ridge against her over-sensitized clit. Then, she’s perched up above and the tip of his cock, flushed and hot and fat, prods against her clit. She circles her hips once, twice. It slides out of place messily but Jareth reaches between them to take hold, and to take control.

Hovering up, she sucks on her bottom lip, grips his shoulders, and breathes heavily as he rubs the head over her clit, directed touches, and then as he draws it down, sliding down her slit, spreading her open until it finds its destination. At the rubbing, curious press of cock-head to her opening, Sarah’s thighs and ass tense up, overwhelmed. He slides back and forth, tip catching in the bendy, bowing part of her in slow, teasing motions. Then, he pauses.

He kisses her neck, her chest, her breasts, and Sarah reaches down between them, circling her fingers around his. She guides him to position.

The first press inside is almost a shock. It’s been a while for her and he’s large, surprisingly so for a man as slender, as boned up and fey-fair as he. Or perhaps not so surprising. At fifteen and under mazy duress and with her character-crush, she hadn’t been capable of stopping her straying eyes. His tight pants blared at her, like a claxon, MALE, MALE, MALE!

She remembers this with nostalgic delight… her attraction for him, such an old thing, burrowed into the very fabric of her being. The recognition of her own feelings sends her haywire. But his kisses and licks to her skin and his hands which go to support her waist serve to ground her.

She lowers herself onto him, slowly. Each millimeter of depth stretching her. Even as wet as she is, there’s a muscled burning of her insides that has her breathless. The good, achy sort of pain, which radiates up through her belly and down her trembling thighs. She goes slow and he supports her as she does.

Then, all her weight is on him, on his thighs and his cock, and her breath comes out shaky, quivering. She’s sat all the way down, firm, length pulsing and burning and extreme from within, balls nudged up at her perineum… the feeling of maleness inside has her all ached up. She clenches around him instinctively, imagining how far up he goes. It gives a flutter to her belly and he groans. She rocks her hips, a jagged, overwhelmed grind, her clit right against his pelvic bone, and he hisses into her skin, arms seizing around her. He thrusts up and Sarah moans, head falling back. The sensations reach her from top of head, the ends of hair, to tippy, tippy toes.

She finds his mouth with hers and kisses it openly. Tongues and teeth and ruby lips mash together, as they move. Her going up and down, wetly sliding, over and over. Him, thrusting upward at his awkward angle, jolting her and going deep, a discordant pattern. The thick, curved line of his cock drives just right into her, an angle which pleases. It reaches far, each thrust going further, deeper. Soon Sarah’s out of breath, aching, burning thigh muscles. Her downward thrusts grow erratic, stuttering, though her hips work never-endingly, the pleasure of him in her too perfect.

“Yes, yes,” she pants. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

They drift in it. Him falling back, her in his lap, he is then flat on his back with her laid out bodily over his chest, hips moving in a downward, greedy motion. She pushes herself up, hovering, and interlaces her hands in his, pressing them over his shoulders. There she bounces, out of breath, full of great feeling and bursting with avarice. Her hips stutter to a halt when he surges up, neck taut, and kisses her, hard. It stuns her, the romantic touch, the slowed down feeling, and he takes advantage.

Smoothly, he rolls them, so now he hovers over her, face peeled into a pleasured grimace, lips turned down at the corners, growly. Joined still, he holds himself up above her, hands digging dents into the mattress at either side of her ribs, and he goes thrust-wild. Relentless hammering of those bony hips into her spread-wide thighs. Sarah’s sex clenches uselessly around him, trying to catch hold, though the burning hot thing drives in and out of her, in and out, too fast for her.

Fluffy, blond hair bounces with his thrusts, but in her pleasure, her sight is corrupted and she sees how he once was. Lionish mane, blocking out the light, a kingly, demon halo. His growly grunts come deep, low, and ripple from his throat like he can’t quite control them. His eyes slide open and shut, viewing her and feeling her in equal turns.

Her arms scrabble at his chest, over his shoulders and her feet drag, overwhelmed, clumsy, over his ass and thighs. She drags him closer and he drops, torso blanketing her, pressing her into the mattress so all she can feel is him. The scent of sweat, of truly him intoxicates her, as it folds around her, all-consuming. His face presses to the side of her head, mouth on her hair, and his hips take on a hooking motion. In and down and up and out. Repeat. Sarah’s sex seizes seizes around him. He kisses her temple and pants her name. “Sarah, Sa-rah, Sa-rah..”

The pleasure rackets up in her, thick and heady in her belly. It almost hurts, their sex, their love-making, but it’s a good hurt, which makes her feel.

Her throat tightens, unbidden, and her eyes prick with strange, embarrassing tears. She buries her face in his throat as the stretch inside her curls her toes and sends shivers through her spine. It feels so good. “Don’t stop,” she gasps, “Don’t stop…”

He doesn’t. Though when his thrusts stutter, he grabs one of her knees to hoist it up further. The new angle changes everything. The wet sounds of their bodies working together becomes all the more evident, the erotic slap of balls against butt, the obscene squelch of cock driving deep inside, over and over. The pants and moans and breaths and the wet, messy noises of joined mouths and tongues on mouths and tongues and on necks and shoulders and chests and breasts and–

“Tell me,” he tells her, breathing heavily through the nose, “when you’re close.”

He nuzzles her neck and her emotions turn to full-bodied racking shudders. Her belly jolts and jumps between them, the sweaty touch of his own stomach against hers becomes a warm, human pressure. She gropes at him, overwhelmed. The pleasure overtakes her, and she cries, “I’m close. I’m close! Don’t stop! Don’t– don’t–”

The weight of his entire focus rests on her and they catch eyes, frantic and rushed moving as they are. His thrusts speed up, go hooking again, and the hand at her knee slides its way between their groins, over her sweaty, slicked mound. His thumb finds perfectly her throbbing, stiff clit, the rest of his fingers a warm weight over her lower belly and, firmly, he circles the aching, aching thing.

She screams his name when she comes, the second time that night, and her body spasms, uncontrollably. Bodily jerks of legs and arms, torso and hips. It takes her by surprise, how wholly affected she is by him. Her breath sutters in her chest and the feelings burst out of her. He rocks his cock into her through it, his eyes clenched shut, high flushed cheekbones. The firm pressure on her clit remains, feeling, surely, the incessant pulsing, twitching of her desire.

When she regains herself, somewhat, the near blackout, shaking release having left her whammied, he’s still thick and hard and deeply warm inside of her. Just as her limbs and heart did moments ago, convulsive spasms around his cock have her shivering, oversensitive, touched. Her attention is drawn to other parts of herself, now. Her thumping heart, her juddering jaw, chattering teeth. The beginnings of tears return and she breathes heavily into his sweat-damp neck, trying to hold it back, though he notices.

He hovers over her, and it’s strange because his cock still stretches her down below but he sees her. His aggressive, animalistic expression from before fades slightly, replaced instead by something odd… something gentlemanly and gentle. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head, eyes squeezed shut. He strokes her face and moves to slide out of her, though he must be aching with his still hard cock, pleasure having been cut short.

She stops him, legs tightening around his hips, ankles crossing tightly over his ass. “Don’t,” she says, a little wobbly, from pleasure and this strange, unheavy, unburdening feeling. She leans up, stretching her neck, and pecks him on the lips. She murmurs, a shake to her words, jaw still controlled, “It was just really good...”

His hand still strokes her cheek, then goes up to stroke her hair. Petting. Sa-rah, he murmurs. “That pleases me greatly.”

She peers up at him, glossy eyes, crow’s feet crinkling up. “But,” she says, quirking a lip, using her feet to drag him closer into her. A twinge of soreness radiates from her inner thighs, but she finds pleasure in it and in the wet, soaked feeling of him still inside her. She rocks herself, well as she’s able, with his weight still heavy over her. “Now I want you to finish. Inside me. So get to it. Chop-chop.”

He grins at her with his own wrinkles of character at eye corners, around his devilish, devouring mouth which smiles so alluringly. It fills her with deep affection, uncontrollable. She blinks and gazes, loving him in that very moment. He gazes back at her too, soft, warm, desirous. The poor, abandoned cock makes itself known once again, this time slower, deeper, lengthier. His hands touch her all over as he moves, stroking her skin, fondling her breasts, caressing her face.

Sarah enjoys it, her own muted, achy, soreish physical pleasure from before lingering in the background, soft and steady and thrumming, allowing her to watch and feel and take a different kind of pleasure. A pleasure to see his pleasure, to enjoy the feeling of a pleased him all around her, under her straying, exploring fingers and caressing lips. Pleasure as he pants in her mouth and thrusts, slower this time but no less real, courteous of her aches.

And the deep pleasure as he finds his own release, which surprises her, how much he is undone by it. A stutter, a gasp, a final burrowing, a groan, an oozing, liquid heat inside her. He kisses her through it, his characteristic deep, sodden, tongue-driven making out, and he holds her tight, fingers bruising and biting her flesh, a reminder she looks forward to, and skin boiling hot all around her. She strokes his hair gently, full of affection, as he pants above her.

The pulling out of her leaves her empty, leaky, and worn. He falls to her side, lays down, and gathers her up in his arms. Cuddly. His hands pet her skin all over, damp with sweat. Heavy breathing remains. The scent of their love lingers in the air, a heady, humid, pleasing reminder. They are both tired and they touch each other, with no intent but to caress and calm, silently. No words needed.

She must fall into a doze for a bit, eyes drifting closed and slowed breathing. Dreamy images and feelings flash in her mind in the doze, though she can’t remember exactly of what when her eyes blink open slowly, provoked to attention by Jareth moving. His limbs shift and he distentangles from her.

“Where are you going?” she says, voice thick with sudden sleep. The fan’s air touches her again, goose-bumping her skin and budding her nipples up. She becomes aware of a throbbing ache in her sex, her inner body, and soreness of her arms and legs and belly. He pauses and leans down to kiss her forehead. “My invitation here will soon expire. I must go.”

His legs unravel off the side of the bed and he stands up, bare and pale and for her eyes. Soft, swinging cock and balls and bare bum. Marks on his neck show evidence of her adorations. Scratches on his shoulders and back. He crosses to the dresser, where his watch lays. He picks it up and fastens it around his wrist.

She sits up against the pillows, confused, and tucks her legs under the blankets. Then drags them up over her belly and chest. “You can stay as long as you want. I don’t care...”

“Not here, in your house,” he says. “My invitation Above.”

“... Oh.”

She watches a little solemnly, as he dresses. Pants first, then shirt. He brushes a hand through his short, modern, new-age hair, so unlike how it was when she first knew him. She frowns, picks at the hem of the soft, fuzzy throw blanket. When he’s finished, he must have caught her mood, for he comes back round her side of the bed and sits down beside her and chucks her chin, softly smiling. She has a hard time looking him in the eye under this reality of him gone.

“Why the long face?” he says, a fond tilt to his head.

She doesn’t know. Does she? Either way, she shrugs mutely.

He leans in and kisses the tip of her nose, such a sweet gesture. She can hardly believe he’s there. It hasn’t caught up to her yet.

“You got what you wanted,” he says, “And I got what I wanted…”

She swallows, eyes drifting up to take him in. Lips swollen still, though no longer shiny with the immediacy of love. Something disheveled about him, soft, human. She agrees, “Yes.”

“But” he murmurs, “If there’s something else you wish for…”

He kisses her now, fully, on the mouth. Lips to lips. He is so warm, Sarah melts a little, sighs. He pulls back and says, “You know how to reach me.”

Then, he stands up, tall. Sarah’s neck bends back so she can follow the movement. He observes her once again, seeing. “Remember, Sarah, who I am.”

He smiles at her one last time, teeth a peek, gleaming, and lips stretched out. Then, just like that, he fades from view, slowly, no sound, until he is gone completely.

Sarah stares in the blank space of her room and sighs, scooting further down under her covers and laying back, hair a-strewn, skin marked. All that remains is the evidence of him between her legs and all over her skin, teeth imprints and mouth sucks. Her hand drifts up to her mouth and she traces fingertips over her kiss-bitten lips. A soft smile takes over, felt under her touch.

Wish-king.