"Sarah...How are you enjoying my labyrinth?"
Her thoughts froze before they could reach her tongue. Trickling like a leak in a great floodwall, her childish effort at vain protest rung like another's voice in her ears.
Is that really what I want this man to hear? She began asking herself in a daze.
"What's said is said..." his words rang like an old song half forgotten.
"Oh no, please wait!"
"Wait...?" Fae eyes tore through her from several paces away.
"This is not how I want you to remember me," her gaze returning his with enlightened resolution.
"Remember?" he scoffed as he ejected hot breath from his nostrils, "How could I ever forget you?"
He'd caught her now, but she only half realized it. Couldn't see how he'd already inched in close. Couldn't feel the air in front of his face until it was too late.
"It's far too late for that now, love..." One smile from those half curled lips and she was a deer in headlights once more. Unsure whether it was safe to breathe. Safe to open her heart to the possibility...
"Love me," he blinked as his head tilted lightly on its axis. In awe she savored in stunned detachment how the man before her could weld absolute and utter inscrutibility with such a dire plea for intimacy.
"Fear me," his forehead drew a hair closer to hers, as if to insinuate the control he wished to wield. Yet in her heart of hearts she understood this was more of an invitation than a command. A subtle statement of fact he was not sure she'd be able to accept-know that I am Other, that you can never chain me, never stop me from sending chills down your spine even though and in truth because I am an abject servant of your love.
"Do as I say," his fingers touched the fabric on her sleeve as the last syllable rode out from his breath. This time Sarah blinked and shook her head imperceptibly, trying to let the truth behind his words open itself in her mind's eye. Or perhaps there was no truth. His pupils burned into her as if to incinerate that last thought before it had time to germinate.
"I do not understand," she responded with mildly furrowed brow.
"Allow me then to show you." He made no further move to touch her. She sensed he desired to let his hands graze her features, her form and yet something held him in check. Then she realized, was he waiting on her?
"Maybe I will. I still find it puzzling, though, why a Goblin King would ask a woman to give him gentleman's leave to behave like a scoundrel..." her cheeks blossoming with red as she spoke. She hadn't meant to be so fresh. All the same, he should know what he was getting himself into.
"Hm..." he stood with upturned lip, apparently mildly amused. Suddenly the space between them grew tense with expectation. His lack of verbal response was more a challenge than anything else. It dawned on her he was still patiently waiting for the definitive response to his question. Dodging it might amuse but never satisfy...
Sarah tried to look down and away from his aura of ripe expecation, but he was too close. She suddenly found her vision filled with warm flashes of his form-neck, chest, arms, shoulders, hips...
"Sarah." The sound brought her face up to meet his once more. He knew she was on the edge of a precipice.
"Don't defy me," he articulated softly merely centimeters from her lips.
At that, something snapped.
Before he knew it, Jareth was cradling a stinging jaw.
She slapped me! Was all he could register in the wake of her departure.