Fade into You: Chapter 14 - The Push-And-The-Pull Of It
The tent was well-lit enough by the filtered light of the full moon for Sarah to see Jareth clearly, even without a lit lantern. A soft smile played on his lips as he released her hand. He watched the other fall from her face as he leaned back on his palms, broadening the distance between them. When his gaze rose to meet hers, his eyes were deep and searching beneath his moonlight lashes.
A small part of Sarah's brain screamed at her to breathe, but her chest felt as frozen as the rest of her as she stared back at him. She was too shocked by his frankness to avert her eyes and dispel the tightly strung tension. The sudden lack of physical contact was just as jarring as his invitation, and she wanted it back. Needed it.
Jareth raised an amused eyebrow. "Take a breath, Sarah, I'm not—" he started to tell her before whatever he was going to say died on his tongue as her lips crashed unceremoniously into his.
She swallowed his small noise of surprise with the firm press of her mouth, hard and unyielding and desperate for contact. Her hands framed his face as she leaned forward awkwardly. Jareth braced himself against the weight of her as the force of her kiss abruptly pushed him back. He drew in a sharp breath through his nose, and Sarah instinctively copied him, flooding her swimming mind with much-needed oxygen.
The reality of what she was doing rolled through her like a thunderstorm, lighting her nerve endings on fire and setting her thoughts spinning. It was almost certainly happening—she was kissing Jareth—but her mind tried to deny it even as she commanded her mouth to move. Her body wouldn't obey her as though it was detached from thought completely. She felt silly kissing him so forcefully, like a clumsy amateur without any plan for how to follow through with what she'd initiated.
Jareth didn't seem to mind. He leaned into the kiss, relieving some of the stiffness in both of their postures. He made no move to touch her, and Sarah couldn't be sure if it was out of shock or his ceaseless determination to let her have full control. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, and she felt an overwhelming need to see him—to gauge his reaction to what she had done. To make sure this was all real.
The kiss ended almost as soon as it began when she pulled back slightly and opened her eyes to find his, wide and waiting. Silence stretched as they looked at each other, and a small smile curved the corner of his mouth. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against the shell of her ear. "Straddle me," he purred, "and try that again."
Sarah's heart pounded relentlessly against her ribs as she complied, crawling into his lap and planting her knees on either side of his hips. Insecurities battled with her desire, and she did her best to push away her growing concern that she'd bungled this whole first kiss thing.
Jareth's hands came up and tugged the sides of the bucket hat she'd forgotten she was wearing down around her head. "No worrying," he reminded her, his voice thick and full of reassurance.
She sent him a guilty smile and threaded her fingers in his hair, pulling his face to hers until their lips met again. The press of her mouth over his was gentler this time, light enough for her to feel the softness of his lips—parted slightly, warm and inviting. He whined as she captured his bottom lip and sucked experimentally. The sound of it jolted her body and brain into alignment as she deepened the kiss.
The taste of him was intoxicating—uniquely him beneath the lingering mintiness. Her fingers tightened at his nape as she kissed him with urgency, almost in a panic. Jareth relented to her ferocity, allowing himself to be devoured as her passion swelled into something that felt nearly unmanageable.
A hand gripped her jaw as he pushed back into the kiss, matching each stroke of her tongue with his. Sarah moaned, lost in the feeling of the demanding crush of their mouths, the push-and-the-pull of it. She bit his lip hard and relished how his breath snagged in surprise, and he bit her back just as hard, smiling against her mouth when she whimpered.
Sarah's hips rocked forward on instinct, and she could feel the hardness of his arousal against her aching cunt. Jareth growled, his hold on her jaw tightening as she repeated the movement. Her fingers slipped from his hair and moved down his chest, desperate to feel the heavy weight of his cock again in her hands.
Jareth grasped her wrists suddenly and broke away from her, eyes over-bright and searching when they found hers. His breaths were fractured and heavy as he said her name, each syllable under its own spotlight.
Sar-ah.
She felt her face fall, suddenly unsure of herself. "Sorry, I—"
"No, It's not…you didn't—" he began, pausing to collect himself before starting again. "Can we let this have the moment it deserves?" His grip on her chin softened as it moved to cup her cheek. "I need you like this," he explained between pants, his words coming out as a hurried spill. "I need you here with me, here in this kiss, and nowhere else." His forehead pressed against hers. "Please. Let me have this. Let us have this."
Sarah's heart lurched. It was difficult to accept she'd been rushing, eager to move past what felt so alien to her. No one had asked for just a kiss before, and sex had felt like the natural next step. But Jareth needed closeness on a deeper level, and she realized she needed it too; craved the intimacy of his kiss above anything else, and it was exciting and terrifying all at once.
When she nodded, the corners of his lips kicked up in a relieved smile that soothed her anxious nerves. She knew in that moment that she wasn't alone in her vulnerability or her fears.
Jareth burrowed into her neck as his hands fell from her face. He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer in a lingering squeeze that Sarah thought was more of a hug than anything—a plea to be there with him. To feel this with him, heartbeat to heartbeat.
She let her head fall against his shoulder, and he inhaled deeply, echoing her as she breathed him in. They held each other like that for a nebulous moment, all breath and summer sweat, before a hand found her shoulder and gently pushed her back onto the pillows.
Jareth slipped the hat from her head and set it aside before stretching himself over her. He clasped her hands before pinning them on either side of her head. "Leave these here," he ordered, his eyes sparkling with dangerous affection. "You've kissed me. Now I am going to kiss you."
Chaotic hair tickled Sarah's heated skin as Jareth's lips sought a pinned wrist. Her heart fluttered as he kissed her there, tender and soft. The mood in the tent shifted to something new—fragile and delicate, like a pane of chilled glass hovering too close to a flame.
The fingers gripping her other hand slackened before skating down her forearm. His fingertips traced loose but deliberate patterns over her skin as they feathered back up her arm, soothing and sensual all at once. Sarah coiled and relaxed, trying to ease into the familiar feeling juxtaposed so dramatically with the flick of his tongue over the veins in her wrist.
Jareth's mouth traveled down her arm and paused at the dip in her elbow to suckle the artery, pulling it to the surface. He scraped his teeth over it lightly before pressing a kiss there.
Sarah tightened her grip on his fingers when his lips found her shoulder, free hand clenching and unclenching at nothing as a pang of unexpected fear wiggled into her heart. This felt so good, so right, it almost hurt to think of it ending—or of all the times she had resisted allowing it to begin.
He squeezed her hand back as if intuiting her anxiety and murmured against her collarbone, "Tell me to stop, and I will."
If it's too much, was the unspoken adjoinder to his promise.
Sarah swallowed hard, and Jareth's lips lingered over her décolletage as he waited.
"I don't want you to stop," she told him. Her voice was quiet but sure. "I want this from you."
She felt his lips curve against her skin before sweeping barely-there kisses along the column of her throat. Though the press of his mouth to her skin was soft, the sound of it was somehow loud in the enclosed space of the tent—all she could hear above her pounding heart.
Jareth pulled her ear lobe between his teeth, and she whimpered at the sensation of his breath warm against her skin. "With me," he corrected before licking the shell of her ear.
She hummed a question absently, struggling to remember to keep her hands where he had left them. She wanted to touch him, to dig her fingers into his hair, to pull him closer. He must have sensed it because he let go of her hand and pulled away for a moment to retrieve the maroon chenille blanket, twisting it into a thick rope and arcing it above her head, placing it in her tensing hands.
"Hold," he instructed, then continued his previous thought. "You said you want this from me. I need you to want this with me." His head dipped down, and he kissed along her jaw before his lips brushed the corner of her mouth. "Do you?"
His almost-kiss was warm, so inviting, but nearly unfathomable despite the fact that she had been practically consuming him minutes before. The thought struck her that this was to be their first kiss. The first real one, brimming with intention and love before it had even begun. This was a different moment with a different meaning. He would kiss her slowly, she knew—gingerly and unhurried. And she would be right where they both wanted her to be.
"Yes," she whispered, hyper-aware of how the word puffed out in a breathy pant against his cheek. "I want to feel this with you."
Jareth's answering smile ghosted over her mouth, and he left a kiss on the opposite corner. When her lips moved to capture his, he pulled away just out of reach and rested his forehead on hers. His hands came up to frame her face as he searched for something there that Sarah couldn't name. He looked as though he wanted to say something, his swollen lips parting slightly with a brief vocalization that cut off short as if he reconsidered. Instead, he leaned back down and caught her lips in a soft kiss.
Sarah watched as his silver-gold-fringed lids fluttered shut. Her other senses took over as her own eyes closed—the sound of the shaky inhale he dragged through his nose. The rustling of a hand shifting into her hair. The smell of salt on the skin above his upper lip and the lavender-scented soap he'd washed his hair with. The feeling of chenille in her grip and his weight trapping her. The taste of his mouth as he teased her lips apart.
The taste of his mouth. The taste of his mouth. The taste of his mouth.
Sarah opened to him like a flower orienting toward the morning sun, eager but slow. She shivered as he purred in appreciation, coaxing her with each stroke.
The slide of Jareth's tongue over hers was somehow both familiar and unexpected. Sarah melted into the heat of it. His kiss was unlike anything she had experienced, fluid and generous and yet purposefully contained. It wasn't a battle of wills like part of her had expected and maybe even hoped for. It wasn't surrender, either. It was the soft sharing of touch and warm breath—an exchange of emotions that ran deeper than any words spoken between them had.
Sarah lost her thin grasp on time as he kissed her deeply and thoroughly. It could have been hours before Jareth pulled away. "Don't move," he commanded, his tone severe as he studied her. "I want to remember you like this."
Sarah stared at him, an eyebrow raised in question.
"You haven't started fretting yet," Jareth said. "I told you you'd be happy this weekend and that I wanted to see what your face looked like when you were. You look happy now," he observed, a small, hopeful smile ghosting his expression. "Are you?"
"I-I think I'm"—she cast a glance around the tent as though looking for the right term, her heart a trapped hummingbird flitting this way and that in her chest—"twitterpated."
Jareth's eyes narrowed, though the corner of his lips lifted. "I haven't the slightest idea of whether or not that answers my question," he told her, carding a hand through his hair.
She let go of the chenille and brushed away the strands that immediately sprang into his eyes. "I'm happy, Jareth,' she said, combing her fingers through the mess of it before pulling his face towards hers to kiss his cheek. "You make me happy. This makes me happy."
He was smiling when he pulled back to gaze down at her. "That's all I've wanted."
Sarah felt her forehead wrinkle in protest. "Your happiness matters, too, Lanks."
"Oh, stop that," Jareth scolded, rolling his eyes. "Can you manage to not feel guilty about letting me coddle you, just this once?" He booped her nose in emphasized chastisement. "Bothersome harpy."
"Fine," she allowed with a guilty laugh, wrapping her arms around his neck and snuggling him close. "Hold me tonight?"
"How I've craved hearing that request," Jareth said after releasing a dramatic sigh. He rolled them so Sarah could curl into his side before doing his best to entangle them as much as possible, encouraging her leg between his, their feet fitting together like they'd been perfectly molded to do so.
"Are you happy?" she asked him as she nestled her head onto his chest, her fingers playing idly in his hair.
"Beyond," he told her, squeezing her to him.
Sarah smiled and let her eyes drift shut as his lips feathered kisses in her hair. He hummed a melody, quiet and soothing. She wondered dreamily how his rich baritone could still be so ethereal, crystal dew drop notes shimmering on gossamer thread.
Loud, hypnotic drumming. A pulse that thumped and thumped. Hers? His? It was hard to tell with Jareth's heart newly stuffed into her ribcage. Her bones were unused to having so much to protect. They stretched painfully to make room. A perfect stretch, a perfect pain.
It was overwhelming, a sensory storm—almost too much. The creaking leather of searching fingers. Salt on her tongue and something else. A shared moan spilled back and forth between open mouths.
That drumming, still. Louder, urgent. Their bodies pushed and pulled in a rhythm that matched its demanding beat. His scent clung to her, all forest and moss and stone. She could smell herself on him, too. Her shampoo, her sheets, her cunt.
"Sarah," a breathy voice called to her from liminal space, catching in a gasp as she rocked her hips into her pillow. "Wake up," the voice pleaded as though not for the first time.
Her brows drew together in sleepy defiance, eager to remain fully rooted enough in her recurring dream to finally see it through uninterrupted. "Go away."
A soft chuckle rustled her hair. "You are making that very difficult, seeing as you are clinging to me like a spider monkey."
Sarah huffed. "I'm not—"
"You are," the voice insisted, stretched thin with something like desperation. "Wake up. You're dreaming."
"Then let me dream!" Sarah grumbled. "And no creeper sleeper songs," she added warningly.
A laugh this time. "A song was the last thing on my mind. Open your eyes."
Despite her efforts to stay asleep, dream-Jareth touching every inch of her heated skin, her eyes fluttered open to see…Jareth, lying on his back with her glued to his side.
Her hips rolled again before her brain came back online, sending a rush of pleasure through her amidst the confusion. "Wha—"
"Wake. Up." Jareth's long fingers brushed away hair from her face. "Before I die of this cruel torture."
Memories of their kiss and how they'd fallen asleep wrapped in one another's arms flooded back to her and her already racing heart skipped several beats. "Oh," she said flatly.
Her lip worried between her teeth as she took stock of the situation. Not drumming, but heavy raindrops on the tent from an apparent summer storm. Jareth's fingers were bare and warm against her cheek, not gloved in leather like in her dream. It wasn't her pillow pressed between her legs, but Jareth's thigh.
He smiled, eyes bright in the filtered light of the moon. "Yes, oh."
"I'm awake," Sarah confirmed after blinking the sleep from her eyes and willing away her embarrassment.
"Thank the Gods for that," Jareth said, his voice nearing a growl. He turned to face her, his hand briefly leaving her cheek to hook her leg over his. His mouth lingered at her temple before he left a kiss there, thumb pressing beneath her bottom lip. "Does that mean we can kiss now?"
The question was a whisper that somehow managed to echo inside the tent, bouncing back to her endlessly and making her squirm with desire. She brushed her mouth over his in answer. When he only smiled against her lips, she murmured a quiet, "Please."
Jareth made an appreciative sound as he obeyed. The gentle pressure of his mouth against hers was a slow, deliberate thing, but there was barely restrained urgency in his voice when he pulled back and said, "Waking up to the scent of your need and knowing it was me you needed was unbearably arousing."
Sarah could feel the proof of it against her hip, and she shifted until his thickness pressed between her thighs. Her fingers threaded in his hair, and she pulled him back in. The tip of his tongue slid over her bottom lip before he drew it into his mouth and suckled it, gasping as her hips jerked reflexively.
"Is this okay?" she asked uncertainly, recalling his nervous request to slow down from the night before.
Jareth hummed, his cock twitching against her. "It's perfect."
The friction of their clothing against her throbbing clit had Sarah grinding her hips forward again. Jolts of electricity pulsed through her nerves, and her whimper cut off into a moan as he rocked back against her. He made a little gasping noise that almost sounded like surprise as a crack of thunder resounded outside the tent. It was momentarily filled with light, and when Sarah met his eyes, she saw a deeply relatable expression on his face she was sure was reflected on her own.
I still can't believe this is happening, in spite of everything we've done.
It was dreamlike but real in the truest sense of the word. Everything like her fantasy, and yet, nothing like it at all. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she could feel a slight tremble in her fingers. If he felt anything like she did in that moment, a trace of fear was surfacing beneath his want.
"I'm here," she reassured them both. "I'm with you."
Jareth's mouth claimed hers again, his kiss deep and searching. He rocked his hips against her, stroking her tongue with his as she whined and returned the motion. Their movements were nebulous, bodies writhing with the languid stretching and arching of spines.
Her fingers clenched in his hair, and his hands held her face, drawing impossibly closer. Liquid fire thrummed in her veins as their hips rolled together in steady, unrushed circuits. Sarah forgot time again, drowning in the fluidity of their passion. The push-and-the-pull of it.
All there was was them—the feeling of friction and pressure and lips, tongue, and teeth. The sound of the rain cocooned them, not unlike the summer storm on the night Sarah had first met her Goblin King. It made her ache for him all the more. For this.
Jareth's exhalations became breathy grunts against her mouth as she shifted against him with a new urgency. The sounds of his pleasure sent her spiraling, and she hardly heard herself say his name like a prayer.
His hand moved to her ass, and he held her to him, grinding his cock against her clit. Her fingers tightened in his hair as a deep coiling of heat furled and unfurled low in her belly. He nipped her bottom lip when she cried out and moaned with it between his teeth as he thrust again.
The coiling melted into a molten cascade at hearing the sound, and she crashed over the edge, feeling his cock throbbing against her as she did.
Jareth's teeth released her lip when the movement of their hips stilled. He kissed her bruised mouth, soothing and warm. The hand on her ass shifted to her hip and gently pushed her back. He followed and hovered over her, a hand sliding across her belly and resting there, low and dangerous.
"Alright?" he husked, his fingers dancing above her waistband.
Sarah moved her hand over his and guided it into her sweatpants before pushing one of his fingers inside herself, shuddering at the sensation of him there, deep and filling and right.
His lips curved. "I need a 'yes.'"
"Yes," she said and gasped as his fingertip rubbed the sensitive nerves along her front wall.
She could feel how wet she was, how ready. She let her hand stay loosely over his, enjoying the feeling of her dampness and knowing it was for him as he pumped his finger inside her. Sarah's eyes flicked to his mouth, anticipating his kiss, but Jareth pushed himself up on an elbow and gazed down at her.
"I want to watch your face," he told her. "I need this to be real just as badly as you do, Sarah." Another finger slid into her as he said, "And I need it burned in my memory forever."
Bright light burst behind her eyes as his thumb pressed down on her clit and rubbed in time with his fingers. She arched against his hand, his face swimming out of focus as her climax rolled through her.
The movements of his hand slowed and then stilled when her head fell back on the pillows. "Stunning," he cooed at her before withdrawing his fingers and sucking one into his mouth. He glanced at the other in consideration. "Do you want to taste how much you want this?"
Sarah fought to keep her eyes from going wide at his boldness but nodded her head almost immediately.
She did.
Jareth's glistening lips stretched to reveal a sharp-toothed grin. His fingertip brushed her slickness over her bottom lip before he raised a challenging eyebrow at her.
Sarah sent him a mischievous smirk before flicking her tongue out to capture the moisture, rich and tangy, and for him alone.
Jareth watched her, rumbling with a low sound of satisfaction. It rolled into a purr as she wrapped her lips around his finger and took it into her mouth. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked, her tongue lapping away the remaining evidence of her passion for him.
For this.
He made a pained noise as his finger slipped from her mouth. They stared at each other for a long, heavy moment before sharing a smile.
"Shall we wash away our sins in the rain?" he asked, his smile stretching. "I'm afraid I've ruined these trousers you leant me." He glanced down to acknowledge the dark patch on his grey sweatpants. "And I can't imagine wearing those"—he nodded toward the apex of Sarah's thighs—"in your current state will be comfortable for long."
Sarah laughed, excitement at the idea bubbling up from her chest. "You're unhinged," she said anyway.
"Towels exist," he reminded her helpfully, a salacious smile slipping across his features. "I promise to dry you off as thoroughly as I—"
"Alright," she interrupted, pushing a hand against his chest lightly as she sat up. "A naked romp in the rain it is."
Thank you, Geliot99, for beta-reading this (several times). You're my hero.
*explosive sigh of relief* FINALLY! These dorks are figuring it out.
I have been so nervous and excited to share this chapter with you, and I really hope you enjoyed it. Please let me know what you think