“It’s raining, Hatter.” She glanced around, worry in her eyes. “Lightning. It’s not good to be out here. Let’s go someplace else.”
The rain relented, gray clouds broke apart and sunlight peeked through. A fine mist swept in, bringing with it the fresh scent of springtime and flowers.
She was trembling, but not from desire like he was. Alice was rubbing her arms. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here. Why am I here, Hatter? Why do I keep coming back to you, when you don’t care?”
He did care. He cared too much. Why? He didn’t know. Because she was so beautiful? But the others had been beautiful too. Because she liked poetry? But she wasn’t the first.
Because she looked like the other one?
He didn’t know. She was different, but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t know how to put that into words.
“You shouldn’t be so wet,” he growled. Not a good host. A good host would never let his lady get sick. Sickness killed.
His heart clenched. Black eyes. Lifeless eyes, staring at him from a pale, heart shaped face. His breathing intensified as the image, always fragmented and fleeting, rammed his skull.
For just a moment, he remembered. Mother, pretty mother. Sick. Coughing. Wet, she’d been wet and he’d been young. So young. He’d wanted to play. The sky had grown dark. She’d told him. Warned him. Come home when it gets that way.
He hadn’t listened. He’d just wanted to play.
She’d come to look for him.
Two weeks later, she was dead and he was alone. Crying, with no family and no home. Then he’d fallen. Fallen.
Sickness brought death.
“Hatter?”
That voice was a dulcet lovely thing and it brought him back, snapped him from the violence of his mind. He jerked and she watched him, wondering if he were truly insane.
He frowned. I’m not crazy, not, not crazy. He wanted to scream it and yell it, to convince her not to give up on him and his wild ramblings as the others had.
Instead, he wrapped his fingers around her slender wrists. So very gentle, he could snap them. So frail were they. Gentle. Gentle. She did not resist.
He pulled her onto his lap. She sat, stiff as a board smelling like caramel and salt, honey and warm cinnamon. He wanted to trace her with his hands and his tongue, to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled.
He moved his hands, running them along the length of her spine, slow and sure. She shivered and let out a tiny whimper. But this time, he didn’t think it was from the cold.
Hatter pushed heat into his palms, drying her off, steam rose from her clothing. She sighed and dropped her head onto his shoulder.
His cock grew heavy, hard against his thigh. He trembled, feeling twitchy, almost on the verge of losing control, but he didn’t stop touching her or running his fingers down the sides of her thighs, up again, and around the generous swells of her breasts. Hard nipples rubbed against his palms and he growled.
“Lovely. My Alice.”
She nodded, voice liquid as she said, “Your Alice. Oh yes, Hatter. Yes.”
He no longer skimmed her body, he began to apply pressure, to knead and touch. He licked his lips, noticing a pearly drop of water slide down her neck, coming to rest at the base of her throat.
Such a perfect little drop, clinging to her neck, suspended, frozen in time. Refracting light, catching every color of the rainbow inside its liquid cocoon. Alluring, tempting him to kiss it off, but he couldn’t, couldn’t. Because to kiss it would ruin its symmetry. He blinked. The drop quivered, then continued on its journey and he shuddered, aching from the absence of it.
“Oh gods, Alice.” He rested his forehead against her neck. “Why you?”
She turned, straddling his thighs. The warmth of her center enveloped him like a hug and he groaned. Nothing stood between them but a mere scrap of fabric and his pants. He wanted to shift, rub himself against the heat of her body.
Her fingers toyed with the wet hair on the back of his head.
“You make me crazy,” she said, then her eyes widened as if she hadn’t meant to say that and his heart sank. Did she think him as mad as all the others had?
She smiled, all teeth and full lips curving up so prettily. He wanted that mouth on him, all of him. He gripped the armchair, refusing to touch her anymore.
The sky started to darken again.
She shook her head. “I have to tell you something. Something that’s painful for me, but you have to know.”
His body tensed, waiting to hear her say she hated him too, that she’d lied, that she would leave, that…
“You remember in the cave when I stopped talking?”
He narrowed his eyes and nodded. She shook and he couldn’t stop from rubbing her arms, trying to calm her, aching to hold her, yet sensing this cost her a great deal and if she didn’t tell him now she might never muster the courage to tell him later.