A few twists, several turns, and about ten minutes later the Labyrinth walls finally open out into a great pavilion with a bubbling fountain. The sculpture in the center is indecipherable and framed by ivy and moss as though abandoned to the elements. Lily pads drift in the rippling waters, fronds of moneywort spilling over the stone.
Her feet are starting to throb as she crosses the pavilion through to her own personal garden. The air thrums with the scent of bluebells, saffron, and lavender. As she always does she lets her finger trace across the tops of the wild grasses that grow high enough to skim her thighs, before climbing the stone steps to the castle.
The shadows are soothing and she takes a moment to lean briefly against the cold stone, letting the chill unwind the muscles in her back.
The corridors are loud with goblin chatter and chicken squawking. Oddly intimate, the way standing outside a party can be, and Sarah smiles to herself.
When she can finally make her weary legs listen to her again she skips up the steps to the left, taking them two at a time. Down another corridor, under an extravagant archway, past an armory and a staircase leading down to the kitchens, a balcony overlooking the Labyrinth, she approaches the throne room where most of the noise is spilling from.
She leans in the doorway, watching Jareth being entertained by a malignity of goblins; three on his lap, one falling asleep on his shoulder like a decrepit parrot, and five making a performance of a historic goblin battle for his amusement.
He holds in a chuckle as one of the goblins topples off his makeshift stead of a second heftier goblin, and offers an ear scratch to one of the ones in his lap.
Sarah smiles at him, and his gaze meets hers, a flicker of his eyes under his lashes as if only just noticing her, but there's a darkness to his pupils that indicates he heard her coming and is yearning for her deeply.
She blows him a kiss and he acknowledges it with a slow blink, gesturing her off to the kitchens to grab something to eat with a tilt of his head. She doesn't linger, not wishing to waste more time than she has already.
At one of the long kitchen tables that are usually piled with goblins but are currently empty, she finds roast chicken and potatoes waiting for her. Sweet, buttery peas, and root vegetables too. She's almost too tired for it—the stiffness in her calves, lower back, and shoulders begging to soak in hot water instead—but the first bite pulls a groan from her throat.
A glass of peach wine washes it down and warms her stomach with a heat like a dying summer. It tastes like him. Like his skin under her tongue.
Sarah pours a second glass from the bottle on the table and carries it up the stairs.
The stone walls flicker with the light of the torches lit in the sconces as she moves down the one long corridor that seemingly leads nowhere. Just a gallery of tapestries that dead ends at a blank wall.
She takes a sip of her wine, holds her breath, and pushes through the stone. It moves for her. Cushioning her like loose sand and obligingly moving out of her way until she's through to the other side.
Once in Jareth's expansive bedroom, Sarah leans back against the sandstone newly solidified behind her—the only clear space piece of wall—and lets her eyes drift over the beautiful chaos. It's still breathtaking even a year later, and the erratic decadence feels cozy rather than overwhelming. The mountains of books and treasures and clothes piled into trunks and against tapestried walls feel like a delightful nest that she can burrow into for as long as she wants. A glittering opposite to the hoarder trash pits of the outer-Labyrinth walls.
In front of the lit fireplace—underneath the mounted dragon's head—a copper bath is already steaming.
She doesn't stall.
She places the wineglass by her feet and begins untying her boots. Unzips and slips off her jeans and her underwear before undoing her bra and pulling it and the blouse up and over her head. She dumps her clothes, the watch, and the bracelet in a heap over a tower of books abandoned on a chaise lounge before taking up her cup again.
With the fingers of her free hand, she reaches up and sets swaying the medallions and suncatchers dangling from the teeth of the monster above the fireplace. They tinkle as they collide with each other, dots of light refracting off their surfaces and glinting on the polished sides of the tub.
The water is hot enough to make her curl her toes as she sinks in, and scented with oud wood and cedar, melting the aches from her muscles in an instant. After sweeping the long sheaf of her hair over the lip of the bath to keep it dry she slips down to the hairline at the nape of her neck, holding the wineglass by the rim over the edge.
Sarah closes her eyes, lounging comfortably for a long time until soft fingers trail down her forearm and lift the wineglass out of her hand, rousing her from her almost-doze to Jareth's gaze traveling the length of her.
"Champion," he murmurs by way of a greeting, taking a sip of her wine as his eyes meet hers. Her jacket has been discarded from across his shoulders, leaving him bare from the waist up, the snake-skin trousers laced tight over his narrow hips.
"Villain," Sarah greets back.
Jareth smiles and sucks his bottom lip free of wine. He kneels at the side of the bath and Sarah's stomach tightens as he leans in, and trails his fingers over the water, sending ripples across the surface.
"You took your time."
She purses her mouth. "Did I?" she asks, sidestepping a lie.
His free hand dips past her knees, long digits wrapping around the swell of her calf.
"Positively dawdled."
Untrue, since she'd deliberately taken the wrong route.
"Positively didn't," she responds playfully, even as his fingers ghost up to her thigh.
They linger right at the top, his middle finger brushing just shy of her mons and she stiffens, waiting for more.
"Open your legs, Sarah," he commands and she meets his gaze—black where both pupils have expanded to the edges of his irises. Her name in his mouth tugs at her core and encourages her to obey.
Sometimes she fights it. Sometimes she counters it with a command of her own.
Not this time.
She widens her knees until they touch the sides of the bath as he continues stroking, his fingers a teasing presence just shy of where she wants him.
"Too distracted to finish on time?" he teases.
Sarah shrugs back one-shouldered, unbothered by his words as she focuses on the stroking movements of his hand. Down from thigh to knee with soft fingers and back again. "Still a piece of cake, Jareth."
He pinches her hard on the soft flesh of her inner leg and she hisses, pressing her thighs together over his hand.
"I said open them," he says quietly, but with a tone like a sharp knife edge. "I won't tell you again."
Sarah glares but lets her knees fall open again. The bath is constricting; even though it's wide and deep enough for the both of them she can't open her legs fully and it feels frustrating.
His touch graces the sensitive skin on her inner thigh, causing her muscles to tremble slightly as her head falls back against the lip of the bath, eyes closed and her hands flat on the floor of the tub to stop herself slipping down.
A clink of glass against stone signals he's left the goblet of wine on the floor before his hand is in her hair, sinking deeply into the locks at the back of her head.
"Did you drag your feet, precious?" he asks.
She peers at him with half-closed eyes, flickering shut again as his fingers swirl in the water at her core, sending a ripple of sensation over the sensitive flesh. In contrast, the hand in her hair tightens.
"A little," she answers truthfully. Her hips move on their own, seeking out more of his touch but he doesn't oblige.
He tilts her head to the side with a fist at the back of her head and runs his nose over the shell of her now exposed ear.
"To torment me?"
"To torment you," Sarah confirms, a sliver of smug overconfidence warming her words.
She moans when his middle finger glides from her core to her clit, swirling too lightly to properly stimulate and her thighs nearly snap shut again to force some pressure.
"To make me wait?" he whispers into her ear and her back bows with want.
She doesn't answer—knowing what path he's leading the conversation down—and bites back a whimper as he removes his hand from between her legs.
"Get out of the water, Sarah."
With a hand on her arm, he steadies her as she rises out of the bath, but doesn't offer her a towel or a robe. Not that she needs it, the fire is crackling pleasantly and radiating a fierce warmth that already has the droplets drying on her skin.
He edges her closer to it with a hand on the small of her back, until she's standing under the dragon's enormous maw, the curtain of trinkets swaying just above her head.
He holds her gently by the hips and stands in front of her, blocking the heat as he lays a first kiss over the mark at her neck, another just below her jaw. When his lips find hers she sighs against him, her hands instinctively raising to twine around his shoulders but he catches them by her wrists and instead drags them down to his waist. He brings them to the center of his pelvis, encouraging her to undo the laces corseting his trousers closed and she tugs them loose without needing to break the kiss, pulling them all the way out of the loops.
The cord moves in her hand and she lurches away from his lips to look down.
A long, thin snake writhes in her palm, its body obsidian black and glossy like a polished stone. She nearly drops it in her panic but he holds her by the forearms, steadying her.
"Just a trick, my love," he says softly, taking her hands in his and crossing one wrist over the other.
The snake slithers out of her hold and over her forearms, cording around her forearms in several intricate loops. It squeezes tight, its cool muscles cushioning the bones in her wrists but holding her firmly, before tucking its head under a coil as though going to sleep.
Sarah swallows, eyes flashing up to Jareth. "It's not a goblin, is it?"
Jareth laughs and kisses her on the cheek. "No, darling. You just pulled it out of my trousers."
With a grip around her arms, he lifts her wrists up and hooks them over one of the teeth of the dragon. The snake shifts to accommodate and settles with a last squeeze.
It's high enough for Sarah to need to raise onto the balls of her feet, the trinkets and pendants tapping against her skin as they jangle melodically.
"This is new," she states with a nervous eye at Jareth.
He smiles knowingly.
"For us? Not all that new," he says. He trails a hand across her stomach as he leaves to cross the room. Sarah cranes her neck briefly to watch him striding over to the gigantic hollowed-out bird's foot by the threshold, filled with rapiers and swords and—most noticeably—his riding crop.
"Admittedly, the first time outside of a dream, however," he clarifies as he pulls out the crop with index and middle finger.
He returns to her and Sarah's thighs tighten at the sight of it in his hand. With the flat of his boot, he slides her feet further apart until she's almost on tiptoes. The new position burns, making the only recently soothed muscles of her back taut again and causing a quiver in her legs.
"Comfortable?" Jareth asks.
Sarah glares at him, adjusting her arms to take a minute amount of pressure off her shoulders. "No."
"What a shame."
He straddles one of her legs, moving her hip into the bulge of his trousers with a light grip on her waist, and skates the crop's handle down her spine.
Sarah gasps as her back bends, the severe position making her skin tingle from every touch. His left-hand reaches up to cup her jaw, thumb running a line over her lower lip and she can't help nuzzling into his palm, relishing the way his skin thrums with magic against hers.
He presses into her mouth, between gum and lip, and gently squeezes her scar between his fingers. Sarah groans loudly, and his hand slips down onto her throat, lightly caressing her jugular, then her clavicle, down to her breast.
A finger brushes over a nipple, already stiffening despite the heat from the fire. He copies the action over the other, and pinches before wrapping long fingers over the whole mound, kneading her gently.
A moan tumbles from her lips as she arches up into his touch, her bound hands curling into fists.
"Will you tell me why you like it?" he purrs and Sarah turns her head to meet his eyes. He looks hungry, seduced entirely as he angles his head to take her in. "Being so restrained?"
Sarah blinks at his question. "I don't know why," she answers honestly.
He smirks, unconvinced. "Then let me deduce." His hand drops to her ribs, sweeping the curve of her hourglass with teasing slowness.
"You enjoy feeling trapped yet safe?" he prompts as his fingers reach her hip, moving inward over her upper thigh. "In control by not being in control?" His head tilts, taking in the blush spreading from her neck to her cheeks as his fingers apart her folds. "Dear me, is this a fetish I've caused personally? A romantic appearance at an impressionable age?"
She opens her mouth to answer and at that moment he taps her clit, causing a jolt through her body and a flush of warmth between her legs. He dips a finger to her entrance, coating his fingers before sinking into her core, curling towards the bundle of nerves that always elicits a low groan from Sarah, pumping slowly a few times before circling her clit again with newly soaked fingers.
"Jareth—"
He rubs her gently until her breath starts to drag. Until her legs start to vibrate with tension, then slips two digits inside her. A huff of breath at her shoulder tells her he's just as enthralled as she is. He spreads her with a slight scissor as he pushes her towards a first cresting wave.
Despite the tension across her back and shoulders—the ache starting to build in her calves and biceps—Sarah feels the heat of her first orgasm beginning to burn in her muscles. Shuddering from the nearness of it as Jareth presses the pad of his thumb against her clit.
"Close," she pleads, her face buried against her arm as her eyes squeeze shut. "Close, I'm close—"
She hears the crack before she feels it; a scorching sting of his crop across her backside that pulls her down from that final peak and wrenches a shocked gasp from her lungs.
And an unexpected flood around his fingers.
"Ow," she bites out at him with a glare, her cheeks completely scarlet from the shock of the crop and the heat of the fire.
His mouth stretches wide in a leer that's all teeth. "Unfair?"
"Very."
His fingers slip out of her to stroke a line over her clit down to her core, and she whimpers regardless of the desire to remain indignant.
"Poor Champion," he purrs sympathetically, and as though waiting for those words, the snake coils microscopically tighter around her wrists.
His strokes increase momentum, but not pressure, and Sarah cants her hips forward to try and achieve more friction over her clit. He pulls his fingers back, his touch dwindling to an almost unbearable graze.
"Ask first," he admonishes and Sarah's core clenches tight at the dark heat in his tone.
"Please, Jareth," she begs through gritted teeth, straining against the snake binding her wrists. He relents, pressing into her fully, dragging his fingers either side of her clit until she feels the burn reignite, the fire start to spread down to her thighs and up to her nipples. She swallows down a hungry groan but another takes its place immediately and it hurts her throat to keep them in. Every exhale of breath is accompanied by a mewl of desperation. She arches higher onto the balls of her feet as her head falls back, the wave about to crash over her—
Crack!
She gasps as a sting engulfs her upper thighs and a welt rises in a hot line over her skin.
His hand leaves her core to pinch a nipple cruelly before circling it with a wet finger.
"You tormented me all afternoon, and then you made me wait," he says softly, but his words cause goosebumps to bristle over her skin. "Show me you can be patient."
She bites her lip, squeezing the scar between her teeth as she nods her head.
He slides her feet wide again after the strike of his crop had clamped them shut.
"Keep them there."
He spreads her folds apart. Warm air from the fire laps her sensitive flesh as he slips two fingers over her clit. He swirls them in a loose figure eight, encompassing her labia and core in the motion and Sarah mutters a curse into the side of her arm. Staying still is starting to make her lower back ache, pins and needles beginning to engulf her arms and she shifts to try and find respite from the burn in her legs.
"Jareth, please," she whispers as the muscles of her core spasm around nothing. She needs his fingers inside her. Or his cock. Needs something to come against as the friction builds her higher or it's going to hurt. "Please, Jareth, please—"
Another crack of the crop over the first mark makes her scream. "Not until I say so." But it doesn't diminish the intensity of the orgasm starting to throb and burn yet still not achieved.
Jareth sinks two fingers inside her and when she shrieks in relief he adds a third, pumping lazily as her clit hits his palm. His middle finger presses against the nerve endings bundled at her front wall and she howls as he rubs hard circles over the spot.
Only an inch away from release and her muscles are shivering from holding on to that last swell, keeping herself back from it with clawed fingers.
Her thighs squeeze shut around his hand and she groans from another crack of the crop for not staying still but it doesn't compare to the cramp seizing around his fingers.
"Jareth, no more—" she begs and immediately her wrists are released and she falls into his arms, swept up suddenly in a lift.
He deposits her face down on the bed and with exhausted limbs she attempts to crawl up further but in an instant he has her wrists crossed at the small of her back, his legs straddling her thighs and squeezing her tightly with his knees. She feels a hard pressure at her entrance, and just as she realizes he's released himself from his trousers, he sinks into her.
Her aching walls cinch around him immediately and she screams as she comes, her hips straining to grind back into him but he has her pinned by his weight across her legs. Languid thrusts torture her and as the head of his cock pushes against her front wall a second wave breaks on the back of the first. Her fingernails curl into her palms as he keeps her pinned, rutting into her mercilessly as her shoulders strain to stop herself slipping up the bed.
He leans back off her thighs to run his free hand over the marks on her buttocks and the burn tightens her walls around him. The minute amount of freedom allows her to push her hips back against him, groaning every time he thrusts into her. After kneading her ass with soft strokes he dips a hand down underneath her to work her clit and she gasps.
"Again?" he asks and Sarah nods desperately as he pushes her towards another peak, her walls pulsing desperately around him. "Beg me first," he whispers.
"Please, Jareth, please, pleaseplease—" she babbles nonsensically, cut off as a last orgasm tightens every muscle and forces a ferocious groan from her lungs, stealing her breath. He swells inside, a hand reaching up to grip her hair as he rides his own release, cursing against her shoulder blades.
After a pause for exhausted breaths to be gathered Jareth releases her wrists and hair, kissing up her shoulder until he's at her neck.
Sarah turns underneath him so she can wrap a stiff arm over his shoulders, sighing as he buries his face at her neck. His mouth finds hers, kissing hard as he hugs her tight, rolling them to the side as he wraps her leg across his hips.
"Sarah…"
She preens as his hand strokes down her spine, her hands wrapping around the silk of his hair as he smooths soothing fingers over her burning cheeks, stroking the welts decorating her skin.
"Marry me," he whispers and Sarah stiffens, pulling back to look at his face.
"I thought you said when you asked it wouldn't be with a hard fuck in a soft bed," she replies cautiously, unsure if he's being serious.
"And you said you'd say no the first time," he counters, pressing a hand into the small of her back to bring her stomach flush against his. "I'm simply getting the first one out of the way for the main event."
Sarah smirks, softening into his caresses as his fingers brush up her spine.
"What if I said 'yes'?" she asks, her eyes half closing.
He chuckles, kissing up her jaw. "I would be simultaneously elated and disappointed that you'd robbed me of a more extravagant proposal."
She laughs with him as their legs braid together, twining around each other with greedy arms and hungry mouths. "How extravagant?" she asks.
"Oh, extremely," he answers, peppering open-mouthed kisses over the column of her neck.
"Ah." Sarah nods understandingly. "No, then."
She hisses when he nips her shoulder before wrapping his arms completely around her.
"Wise Champion," he mutters against her, breathing her in. "My Sarah."
"My Jareth," she answers, resting her head against his chest. She dozes in his arms with his name burning on her tongue; a heady flavor of dark red wine and blood red cherries. Black pepper and almonds.
AN: just a quick note here that all safe words and boundaries were agreed upon in the prequel and this is super all with the consensual. G99 x