Nothing Is What It Seems

((A/N-This chapter is carrying an NC-17 rating, and it's the first time I've written smut without being acquainted with whomever's on the recieving end. Reassure me. (I really am going to have to have fifteen reviews before I give up the next chapter folks. And you know you wanna see where I'm going.)))

Sleep overcame her instantly, and the dream followed on it's heels.

Sarah was not usually a lucid dreamer. Oh, she was good at recalling her dreams, but they were always muted and out of her control. This was different. So this is what it's like to know you're dreaming, to touch your dreams... Things were falling into place around her, 'Or am I falling into my place?' It hardly mattered. She was standing in the hedge maze again, before the stone chair that had once played host to a sleepy sage with a chicken for a hat. The memory brought a smile to her face, and as she stepped forward into the spot she had stood all those years ago the rustling of skirts suprised her. Without looking she suddenly knew that she was wearing that dress. The peach dream dress.

As if her thoughts had summoned them, the dancers whirled to life around her. Sarah turned, backing hastily up till her thighs pressed against the cool stone seat and she was at the edge of the ball. Night had fallen abruptly over the maze, and the hedges were lit with a thousand minute lanterns pulsing softly to the tune of an unseen string quartet. 'Will it be the peach dream again? Will he... She didn't know whether to stay. It would have been simple to lose herself in the maze, slip out through one of the passages behind her, but there was something different about this dream.

During the original peach dream, she had been acutely aware of Jareth even before she saw him. His presence, a feeling of terrible insectine knowledge, had been humid and opressive then and she felt none of that now. 'My dream is my own, isn't it?' Sarah contented herself with perching on the edge of the rough stone chair and watching the dancers, and was suprised when a couple broke from the group and stumbled her way. She recognized the woman's dress from the peach dream, it was all baby blue satin, but now the woman was unmasked. As she drew closer, hanging slovenly from her partner's arm Sarah got another shock. This was Gizelle! 'Is she drunk? What's she do -- Oh.' Sarah turned her eyes away as she realized that Gizelle's posture was allowing her a better angle to fish down the front of her dark-haired companion's leggings, whether to avoid unseemly staring or to hid her own blush she didn't know.

'Stands to reason. The Fae are supposed to be a little raunchy I guess. Come to think of it, some of these folks are dancing a little close.' And as Gizelle and her friend passed, Sarah turned her study back to the crowd. The Fair Folk who roamed the dance floor seemed to all be engaged in some stage of very public courtship, and she was taken aback at the growing heat between her own legs as she watched glimmering men draw their hands over their companions' bodices and press themselves close enough to plant kisses up and down exposed throats and shoulders. She was suddenly too warm and all too aware that, whatever she might be dreaming, she was Underground. Sarah focused on the periphery of the courtyard then, and aside from having to glaze her eyes over some indiscreet intimacies, she was relieved to find glittering throngs scattered in deep conversation.

She thought she recognized one of the men as Lychin, her verdant jailor, and was reasonably certain that she had seem Arrym briefly as well, engaged in leading a Fae lady through one of the numerous passageways. Shemight have supposed that Lychin would be readily identifiable by his coloring, but she found that many of the Fae had their own chromatic schemes. One woman had been distinctly blue, and another cast in shades of grey, not to mention a man who was entirly white but for piercing black eyes and the black embroidery on his surcoat. She found herself thinking that Jareth would be able to tell her what she was missing, what might only be conversation and flirtation, and what might be espionage and calculated seduction. The thought dissipated even as it formed, and Sarah turned her imagination to forming her own speculations on the gathering.

But there he was. 'It's not really Jareth. It doesn't feel like Jareth.' It couldn't be him. But there he was, standing before her partially hidden by a group of simpering and attentive women, staring at her. He was underdressed, which proved him to be some construct of her mind and not truely himself, but the simplicity was appealing. Plain white tunic, open perhaps a little low, black vest, black gloves, black trousers, black boots. And now his women were falling back and literally fading away as he approached her. All the dancers and murmurs faded as he passed them, and the music seemed to fold in on itself and disappear. She didn't feel in control anymore and a sense of panic took her, but even as she started to rise he was upon her, forcing her to fall back into the low stone seat and leaning in utterly too close for comfort. As they had earlier that night, his arms fell to either side of her head, trapping her. But now his mouth followed. 'It's still my dream. He's not rea--'

Her world was gone. Somewhere between the observation that his lips were so much softer than she would have guessed and the realization that he tasted faintly of peaches, everything had fallen away. All Sarah knew was that he was kissing her and that she was loving it. The texture of his hair beneath her hands was like silk and he was suddenly burning her with his hands, burning trails down her sides with his gloved fingers, leaving paths of fire over her shoulders where he held her. The chill of air on her skin was the only reason she opened her eyes at all, and she gasped. She lay flat on her back, entirely naked, in the Escher room, with Jareth above her. What was a wall in her eyes he seemed to be standing on with ease, naked as she. There was time to take in the heat of his eyes and the muscles rippling in his shoulders and over his chest before he leaned forward and somehow seemed to fall into her.

It was like everything. There was only a slipping sensation that lit a fire between her legs as he grazed over her swollen nub before he was inside. Somehow he was kissing her, one hand twined in her hair while she drowned in his mouth and the other slipping lower, grazing her chest before coming to rest between them. And then he began to move and she couldn't help but break the kiss to cry out. Every thrust of his hips pushed that perfect tight fullness further into her and sent his fingers pressing against her clit, building something enormous in her belly that she was trying to call out in tiny breathy gasps, that made him smirk that knowing smirk down at her. She found herself clinging to his shoulders and crying out inarticulately as he moved faster, then she was shaking, her muscles tensing in divine rhythm around him and beneath him. Even as she began to come the heat of his climax filled her, and she cried his name.

"Jareth!"

"Yes?" Sarah came suddenly awake and found herself staring at the Goblin King as the best orgasm she had ever had ebbed to it's finish.

He looked annoyed.