“Bad boys need love too.”
Alice is all grown up. Running the Mad Hatter's Cupcakery and Tea Shoppe is a delicious job, until fate—and a fairy godmother with a weakness for bad boys—throws her a curveball. Now, Alice is the newest resident of Wonderland, where the Mad Hatter fuels her fantasies and thrills her body with his dark touch.
The Mad Hatter may have a voice and a body made for sex, but he takes no lovers. Ever. But a determined fairy godmother has forced Alice into Wonderland—and his arms. Now, as desire and madness converge, the Hatter must decide if he will fight the fairy godmother's mating—or fight for Alice.
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Her Mad Hatter
by
Marie Hall
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Her mad Hatter
Copyright 2012 Marie Hall
Cover Art by Claudia McKinney of www.phatpuppyart.com Copyright October 2012
Photographer, Teresa Yeh
Model, Danny
Edited by Jennifer Blackstream, Brent Taylor, and Anne Marsh
Formatted by L.K. Campbell
www.MarieHallWrites.blogspot.com
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This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Marie Hall, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Marie Hall. Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2012 by Marie Hall, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
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Dedication
To those who never stopped believing in me. Especially Joyce and Mom... ya'll are crazy, but awesome!
Table Of Contents
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Danika, fairy godmother extraordinaire, ran her glowing hand over a shadowy bump in the mushroom cap wall of her home. It was the hiding place for her most treasured and valuable item—her wand. She grabbed hold of the smooth wood, the hum of its power echoing down her fingertips like the swelling vibrations of water dripping on thin metal. And though the wand was worn down from years of granting wishes, there could be no doubt she was the best at what she did.
Of course that stupid fat cow- oh what was her face, the one who worked with Cinderella- thought she was the best. But honestly, what was her claim to fame? Turning a pumpkin into a coach? Or, how about making mice footmen?
Preposterous.
She was a disgrace to all the fairy godmothers out there with her ridiculous bippity-boppity-booing.
Not to mention her clientele. That simpering little doll—a classic Mary Sue if ever there was one. Oh save me, Prince Charming, for I am pretty and cannot do a thing for myself. *Bat lashes, wiggle bottom, ad nauseum.*
Blah!
Pathetic little creature. Danika would rather gouge her eye out with a spoon. A rusty one! And... and... roughened at the edges. She humphed. That’s how much she hated the simpering princes and princesses of her world.
Thankfully, she’d never have that problem. The moment Danika had graduated from Fairy Godmother Inc.- three hundred years ago- she’d applied to work as godmother to the lowly. Since none of the other godmothers wished to work for them, they’d given her the position posthaste and left her to do her thing. Quite happily too, she might add.
Danika worked for the bad boys of Kingdom.
The degenerates; low lifes, and naughty villains. She snorted, shaking her head at how little anyone knew about her boys. Why any self-respecting fairy godmother would pass them over for an inane twit who relied on animals to do her housecleaning was beyond her. Grabbing her star-dusted cloak from off the coat rack, she tossed it over her shoulders. Glittering bits of stardust drifted to the floor.
A golden bolt of power flowed down her arm, through her fingers, and out the tip of the wand. It swirled like a flame, dousing out the candles. She shut the door behind her.
Tiny iridescent wings broke free of her vest, lifting her high into the bejeweled night. Her path cut through trees with branches thick as the fattest snakes.
Stargazers shivered at her passing.
“Thank you, Fairy Godmother!” they crooned as the stardust settled on their beautiful pink petals. They swiveled on thin green stems, lapping up the powder like a fine wine.
Danika winked, gave them a jaunty wave, and continued on. Most days she’d stop to chat, maybe sing a song or two, but tonight she traveled in haste.
Once a year, the Bad Five (the truly worst of the worst of her boys) gathered, to drink, to discuss who’d they’d plot against next, and generally muck it up together. It was perfect timing for her—because she had five birds to kill and one stone to do it with.
Miriam the Shunned—fairy godmother of wishes and visions—had given Danika some sobering news last month. Either get the Bad Five hitched, or great misfortunate would befall them.
Not like Danika hadn’t made many love matches already. Her resume was quite hefty. Why just last week Mr. Fee Fi Fo Fum himself had fallen madly for the wicked witch of the West. Next month was to be their nuptials. Danika had received her invitation to the gala only today. And last month she’d introduced Tweedle-Dee to La-Di-Dah, sparks ignited, and Danika was fairly certain there’d be a second wedding in the future.
Danika was good at love matches when given sufficient time, but love matches weren’t as simple as poof there she is, kissy kissy, and sailing off into the sunset. Finding a perfect mate took patience and due diligence. To suddenly be told the Bad Five had a year to find their mates... the thought twisted Danika’s stomach in knots.
Not like Danika hadn’t tried already, many times. But love was much more than chemistry; it was a melding of hearts and minds. Of seeing someone and knowing unequivocally she or he was it.
Thankfully, Miriam had gifted Danika with a boon. There’d been an incident several years ago, one nearly forgotten by all but Danika and Wolf. A sad affair really... Danika shook her head, shoving the haunting memories aside before they grew too strong and claimed her thoughts, now was not the time to think on that, eventually she’d have to address the wrong and pray to the gods she could make it right. But today was for her boys and thanks to Miriam’s sight Danika now knew the names of the women, the very ones her boys were destined to be with.
But she’d been shocked. Not at the names, rather at the reality of just how close she’d been to finding Hatter’s match once before. All within Kingdom knew Alice was destined for Hatter. Their story had been entwined since the very beginning; problem was of the millions of Alices in the world, ‘twas hard to know exactly which one she was.
When Danika was around a viable option her entire body would tingle. Her body had tingled many times and each time she’d been wrong. But a few years ago she’d come across an Alice who did more than make her tingle; her body had surged with power so intense that Danika had momentarily blacked out.
Her name had been Alice Hu.
Miriam had told Danika that Hatter’s true match was also named Alice Hu, great-granddaughter of the original. And Hatter had hated the original.
Flapping her wings harder, Danika tried to ignore the sick pit in her stomach. She’d agonized about this all night and finally came to the only conclusion there was: she would not tell him who the girl was beforehand.
A squawking noise broke her from her musings. Startled, she looked up and just in time too. A large white stork carrying a blue bundle in its long beak headed straight toward her.
“Stork!” she cried, and beat her gossamer wings in a furious fashion, hoping to sail clear of the sharp dagger that was his beak tip. She clutched her chest, breathing deep to calm frazzled nerves.
“Mmm, so shorry, Danika. Muss make me drop time, hiss Excellenshe will tar and feather me if I’m late.” His words were slurred, unable to open his beak too wide lest the babe drop out.
“Honestly.” Danika straightened the ends of her dress in an attempt to settle herself.
The stork didn’t pause, but he dipped his head in apology. Ruffled, but not vexed, she nodded back. He was, she supposed, in a hurry much as herself.
A tiny green fist poked out the top of the bundle.
Danika curled her nose.
She hated ogres, no matter what form they came in. Nasty little boogers they were, always smashing through trees, destroying her precious forest home with their big gigantic ham fists and warty feet.
With a shake of her head she hurried on. She couldn’t wait to see the Bad Five. Of all her charges they were her favorites and for the life of her she could never understand why more fairies didn’t feel as she did. Bad boys needed love too. Her boys weren’t dangerous— just naughty. But naughty could be very, very fun. Unfortunately, Kingdom was mostly made up of goodie two shoes with a very dim view of good and evil. They were completely unable to look beyond her boys’ slightly colorful pasts. So the Wolf had killed a time or two. Big deal. He was a wolf! What did they expect? That he’d lick his balls all day and howl at the moon?
She chuckled at the thought.
In no time she spied the lights that Leonard—the Hatter’s pet mouse—had hung branch to branch. She hovered in the air directly over their table. The Bad Five were already thick in their cups, laughing and eating. Danika took a moment to study her motley crew before they noticed her presence.
The Hatter, as always, slouched in his seat at the head of the table with a fist tucked under his chin. His dark eyes stared blankly into the night, distant, thinking... who knew what thoughts.
Hair disheveled, clothes ripped, but all of it with that flair of style that made it seem possible he’d contrived his appearance to look just so.
Danika had known him several years now, and each year he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of his mind. He needed a mate, someone to help offset the residual madness that built up like toxins in the bones without an outlet. A mate would force him to get out of his head
Wonderland was wonderful, but without a counterbalance, it could turn its inhabitants completely insane.
The man was dangerously close to irreparable damage. He’d been here too long, with no one to pull him from the cliff’s edge. And now, with Miriam’s warnings ringing in her ears, she knew he’d only a year left before the madness completely consumed him. Maybe even less. Her heart clenched— what would Wonderland be without him? Not near as fun, that was for sure.
Hatter took a sip of his tea. She sighed. He truly was a lovely man, with a face that seemed a kiss from the gods, a strong jaw, molten brown eyes, and a mouth made for sin. Her pulse raced. Old as she was, she was not impervious to his charms. Charms he never seemed aware of. Hatter simply was what he was.
“Has the witch arrived yet?” The deep timbre of Gerard’s voice shivered through the cool night. He tipped his head back and chugged from the tankard he held fisted tight in his hand.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Hook said, eyeing the French drunk with a sharp black brow.
“She’s not a witch,” Jinni sipped at his tea, “she’s a fairy. Kahar.” The last dripped from his tongue like venom.
She covered her mouth, containing the mirth that threatened to spill when Gerard’s face mottled a dark shade of red.
“I detest when you speak Chinese.”
“To vilify a man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness,” Hatter said, never taking his eyes from some unknown spot in the distance.
Gerard’s face screwed up, as if contemplating Hatter’s words and whether to take umbrage or not. Finally the effort seemed too much for him. “Argh,” he growled, dismissing him with a flick of his wrist.
Hook rolled his eyes. “He’s Persian, you idiot.”
Gerard clenched his fist. “I can take you, une main.”
“Beauty with no brains, Calypso save us,” Hook said in a whiskey-thick drawl. “He called you an idiot, you dolt.” Never a patient sort, his silver hook tapped the table.
Tap.
The wolf’s nostrils flared. Yellow eyes narrowed to thin slits.
Tap.
A low guttural growl.
Hook’s lips twisted as he looked toward the wolf whose hackles were raised, eyes glowing with threat of violence.
Tap.
“Bloody hell!” Gerard smashed his fist into the table, knocking a silver platter full of crumpets to the floor. “Shut up,” he snarled and snatched up a roasted leg of turkey. Straight white teeth ripped into it with animal aggression.
“Oy,” a tiny squeak rang from a ceramic teapot.
Hatter sighed and flipped the lid up. Leonard popped his furry brown head out. Whiskers twitching as he said, “I’ll give ye a nibble to yer hind, I will.”
“Oh hush, rat. And why do you bother with such a stupid creature anyway?” Gerard asked, looking at Hatter and pointing his ravaged turkey leg at the mouse whose eyes bulged with indignation.
“I never,” Leonard huffed, looking back at Hatter.
Hatter patted his furry head, handed him a sugar cube, and tucked him back into his favorite cubbyhole.
The Wolf gave a gentle whuff, whether of agreement or not—it was hard to say—and continued lapping at the cream within the silver dog bowl.
“Uncivilized.” Jinni sniffed. His form shimmered like heat rolling off the desert sands. Cursed years ago to a semi-corporal existence, Jinni might never again know the touch of another soul. A curse Danika still worked diligently to try and reverse. Of all her boys, he was the most confusing. A naturally magical creature, he was Djinn- genie to most. With powers that rivaled her own, by all rights he shouldn’t have a godmother. But... he’d screwed up big, gotten himself cursed, lost his ability to use magic, and was now her problem to fix.
However—stubborn, difficult man that he was—he was offended by the very notion of a godmother. Which made her job all the more difficult.
Danika knew beneath Jinni’s icy exterior flowed lava. A spark so hot it consumed. If a woman could ever get into that cold heart, his passion would burn as bright as the desert land he’d hailed from. However there was still the minor problem of his near invisibility.
But she was not here for Wolf, Hook, Jinni, or even the lovely, thick-headed, Gerard.
Hatter slouched even further in his seat, his stare a mile long. Antipathy clung to him like second skin.
She tsked.
Wolf stilled, sniffed, then looked up. The others followed suit.
“Fairy godmother, here to grace us with your presence. Oh goodie.” To the untrained ear Hook’s greeting smacked of sarcasm, but she knew the raven-haired brute well.
She dropped to the center of the table, dwarfed by heaping trays of food and enveloped by the scented aroma of tea and spices.
Danika walked toward him, gossamer skirts swishing in her wake. “Were you hoping maybe for Tinker? Heard tell you had a thing for waifish blondes.” She patted the back of her bun, pointing the wand at her chest. “I could always turn myself...”
“Bollox,” he growled, but couldn’t quite hide the smile twitching the corner of his full lower lip. “I’ve a Pan to conquer, madam, so do let us hurry.”
“Ravishing as always. And is that stardust? Why, Danika, you shouldn’t have dressed so formally for us.” Gerard smoldered, his words layered with sex and decadence. Promises of dark seduction and wicked nights danced in the air.
Her stomach quivered and heat bloomed in her cheeks.
He smiled and scratched his own. The rascal. She’d find a woman to bring him to his knees. Too bad Belle had fallen for the Beast—she’d seemed so perfect. But alas...
She turned on the Hatter. He looked even more bedraggled up close. His tie was undone and skewed. She flitted to him, attempted to tuck the dark strands of hair in his eyes back, but it was useless. Finally, she sighed.
“What has happened to you, Hatter?”
There were no emotions on his face and no smile to betray a hint of what he felt. “Life happened, fairy. Surely you know. Or haven’t you heard? Cursed I am. The sky is gray, the sky is light, and still the Hatter bemoans his plight.”
That voice made her think of hot nights, cool sheets, and heady moans.
A choir of mingling voices began to sing. “The Mad Hatter bemoans his plight. Oh nay, oh my, the Hatter bemoans his plight...”
“I hate those flowers. Enfer, why did you plant your abode here, Hatter?” Gerard’s French lilt grew rough with annoyance and he chucked a bone toward the garden of singing dandelions.
Shrieks resonated and then flowery roars reached a cacophonous pitch as they cursed him full of boils, warts, and pustules.
“I do wish you’d hurry this on, starflower,” Jinni said with an exotic inflection that rolled over her skin like heated honey.
Dizzy, and slightly breathless, she returned to the center of the table. Too much testosterone, too many fine pairs of eyes studying her. Heaven help the women these men paired with, they’d be the devil in the sheets for sure.
“As you know, I’m your godmother, and as such I’ve duties to fulfill.”
“Mon dieu,” Gerard groaned. “Must we abide this horror every year? Be done with it, fee. It’s not worked yet.”
“Again?” Jinni crooked a brow.
Hook fiddled with the end of his mustache. A glint of something in his dark blue eyes led her to suspect he was not as opposed as the rest.
The Wolf gave a moaning growl—human in its whining undertones.
Hatter jerked. It was the first reaction she’d seen from him so far. She might have been pleased, were it not for the threat of violence that quivered through the air like the strike of a finely honed blade.
“No more. I told you last time: no more, fairy.”
She held her chin high. “And I’ve given you leeway and your space. But it is more than time to get back in the game. We will keep searching until we find your Alice. We must.” The lie settled heavy on her tongue, Alice had been already been found, and she knew without a doubt he’d be irate. Danika raised her chin. She would not give into fear though, not now.
Gerard threw himself back on the chair, causing the legs to rock precariously, and laughed. A great big booming sound that rent the night. Pigwidgeons scattered like falling rose petals in a thousand different directions.
Gerard picked his teeth. “Mates. I’m in. I’ll take three, no make that four. All blonde. Big...” he framed his chest, “and no readers. Dieux, I hate readers.” His nose curled as he grabbed his magically full tankard again.
“One will do. And that goes for all of you.” She eyed Jinni hard.
His tipped his head. “In my Kingdom we are expected to maintain a full harem, oh magnificent one.”
“Aye, well...” She stomped her foot, wagging her finger at him. “Women from Earth will not abide that arrangement. Besides,” she grinned, recalling one in particular that would be perfect for him, “she’ll be more than enough for what you need doing.”
“Earth?” Hook roared. “Never!”
The Wolf licked his lips.
“Enough, enough.” She raised her hands. “You’ll not have a say. It is my duty to see to your needs. Happy endings are not the sole domain of Prince Charming.” She bristled, remembering the heated battles between herself and her kind.
Love might never tame the beast fully, but it would certainly temper the wildness in each of them.
The Hatter’s face could have been carved from ice. He was as still as a snake ready to strike. She took a step back; he was certainly crazy enough to do it. Heart thundering, feigning a boldness she did not feel, Danika shook her head. “No, Hatter, not even your madness will affect my decision. It is as I say. When the clock strikes midnight-” She waved her wand and a golden antique clock stood before him, its metrical ticks making Hook shudder. “She will be here.”
“Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.” Hatter’s voice was whisper soft, but full of some hidden torment.
Filled with an ache to hold him, she clenched her teeth. She could not. She had a task, and she’d see it through.
“Be... be that as it may, she will come and you will mate her.”
He didn’t seem to notice she’d spoken. “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
She frowned, looking to the others for help in deciphering some meaning behind his cryptic words. The Wolf blew air through his muzzle. Gerard only shrugged.
Hatter was worse, no doubt. There used to be a time she could at least piece together his meaning. Now—oh dear—he truly needed his mate. She knew he was tired of searching. So was she... Especially after the last Alice. The great-grandmother Alice Hu.
Danika clenched her wand tighter. What if the girl looked like the original? She swallowed hard. The last Alice had been cruel, a charlatan. She’d fooled them all. Especially Danika herself. She’d fallen prey to the girl’s outwardly loving exterior. But she’d soon learned they’d had a viper in their midst. The girl had wanted nothing more than the power of Wonderland. She’d never wanted the Hatter.
A reality made all the more sad because she’d never seen Hatter so taken. He’d made a fool of himself—in his mind anyway. He’d shown Alice the wonder and strange beauty of Wonderland, expecting her to love the talking flowers and vaporous cat-shifting loons as he did. But she’d despised it all, wanted to change everything; she’d rejected his uniqueness as madness and mocked him behind his back to others.
Once he’d discovered her deception, something in him had fractured; where once he’d been irreverent, often laughing, he’d turned moody and withdrawn.
Now Danika was set to bring him another Alice, knowing this one to be the right one, but what would he feel knowing this Alice came from that Alice? Would he even give the girl a chance? Would he hate her because of who she was? The thought made Danika sick.
If the magic hadn’t demanded Danika find him an Alice, she’d have brought him a blasted Jane and to hell with all the Alices everywhere.
“Yes, just so.” She sighed in answer to his nonsensical ramblings.
Gerard snorted. “Only bride who’ll have him is one freshly buried. Honestly, fee, cruel torture.”
She planted hands on her hips in her best authoritative pose. Not easy for one barely 10 inches tall. “Your turn will come soon enough, Gerard.”
He shuddered, and she nodded, pleased her words hadn’t faltered. “Now off with the lot of you. Freshen up, get sober, and for the gods’ sakes, wash.” She eyed Gerard in particular.
They all sat staring at her. She glowered. “Go, I say!” And gesturing at them with her wand, she lifted them from their seats. Wolf yelped the loudest as Danika tossed them from the garden.
“Blast you, sorciere demon,” Gerard’s thick growl rose above the grumbles of the rest.
She grinned and twirled towards Hatter. He was staring at her, eyes full of pain, of hunger, of something he felt would be forever out of his reach.
“Cursed,” he whispered.
She patted his cold fingers. “Hatter, you are not cursed. We just haven’t found the one yet. But we will. I swear it.”
Danika’s words sounded sure, but in her heart she trembled. What will he do: was now the chanting mantra tattooed in her skull. She didn’t have a choice, he was unwell, and he didn’t have much time. She bit her lip.
“Let me be, Danika.” He stood. “I do not want a mate out of necessity, or one chosen for me by this crazy up-is-down and down-is-up world. I will not do this again.”
“I love you, Hatter, but hear me well. I’ll never stop.”
He clenched his fist, brimstone burning in the depths of his cold black eyes. Then he blinked and smiled, a slow curling grin. “Do you know, fairy?”
She frowned. “What, my dear?”
His eyes were glazed, his body swaying. “The answer to the riddle?”
Danika’s lips thinned, heart bleeding. He couldn’t even hang on to his anger before the madness claimed him.
She swallowed hard. “I do.”
“And?” He lifted up on his toes.
“Poe, dear.” She touched his bristly jaw. “Poe.”
He snapped his fingers and with a sharp nod, walked off muttering, “I knew it.”
If Miriam hadn’t told truth, if this wasn’t the right Alice, Hatter wouldn’t survive another year. Alice Hu had to be the one, because without the Hatter, Wonderland could never be the same.
––––––––
The bell above The Mad Hatter’s Cupcakery and Tea Shoppe rang as the last customer of the day walked out.
Alice heaved a huge sigh of relief, ran around the counter to the door, and turned the sign. She giggled—the place was a mess, with napkins scattered everywhere. Tons of plates to wash and clean in the back and yet she felt like she’d just completed the Honolulu marathon. Her giggling held a frantic pitch to it. They’d done it. They’d started a business and made money. Lots of it. She hadn’t counted, but she was pretty sure they were well on their way to being in the black.
In another two years.
Her frilled mini dress was covered in powdered sugar, her hair smelled of a million different varieties of tea spices, and she didn’t care. A sense of accomplishment filled her: they’d done it.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she’d landed the sweetest location in downtown Honolulu—right across from world famous Waikiki beach, aka Tourist Mecca. That meant one thing: a constant stream of customers.
Tabby—her baker’s assistant—squealed, grabbed both of Alice’s hands and jumped up and down.
“Girl power,” Tabby sang. “We so rock!”
“I know!”
It took at least five minutes before exhaustion finally worked its way through Alice’s brain. Grabbing her forehead, but still wearing a goofy smile, she dropped down in the seat nearest her.
“Oh my gosh, we did it.” Her words were quiet, more thoughtful, as the full impact of what they’d done finally started to settle in.
“Yeah,” Tabby agreed. “Wow.”
Tabitha planted hands on her slim hips and grinned. “I think this calls for a celebration, don’t you?”
“Can you believe it, Tabby? We’re true blue business owners.”
“Look out world.” Tabby nodded, a smile as radiant as a burst of sunlight, tightened her face. “Feels good, yeah? After all these years, all the tears, all the sacrifices? And our moms thought we’d be good for nothings.” She snorted, reached into the cupcake display case, and grabbed two desserts.
Alice groaned as another dull throb shot up her left calf muscle. She kicked off the four-inch heels Tabby had sworn were appropriate cupcakery attire, and massaged the stiff kink from her thigh-high clad leg.
She’d felt slightly ridiculous in the frilly blue dress that barely covered her butt cheeks, but as Tabby had said time and again: sex sells, even in cupcakeries. Apparently, it was true. Easily half the customers today had been men.
She’d not eaten anything all day, too anxious to get food down. But now it was seven, the day was done, and her stomach suddenly reminded her how neglected it’d been.
Tabby sat across from her. “Mad Hatter’s Surprise, or Hooka’s Delight? Hmm? Hmm?” Tabby wiggled the plates under Alice’s nose. The creations were mini works of art.
The Mad Hatter was a vanilla bean-based cupcake. At its center was a caramel covered slice of jalapeno—the Hatter’s surprise—but it was the tequila cream cheese frosting that made Alice have a mouthgasm every time. She gestured for the Mad Hatter.
Tabby handed it to her, and then picking hers up said, “to a wildly successful day, and to many, many more.”
“Hear. Hear.” Alice nodded agreement; they tapped cupcakes together and then bit into them with simultaneous groans.
“O.M.G. Alice.” Tabby’s eyes were twin saucers of joy. “I’m beyond happy that you decided to waste your life and become a professional baker.”
Alice snorted. Her mother’s words. Mom had had different thoughts in mind for her fourth and youngest daughter. Each Hu child had become something wildly successful. Her oldest sister, Verona, was Honolulu’s most renowned cardiologist. Alma—second oldest—the vet. Tanya—White House correspondent.
Then there was Alice. Head in the clouds Alice. Nose always in the books Alice. Well, one book in particular. Alice in Wonderland.
As a little girl she’d thought it was cool to have a book named after her. Of course, she hadn’t known it wasn’t really, but by the time she’d figured it out, she’d already fallen in love with the dark and quirky prose of the book.
Always imagining it was she—Japanese goddess Alice Hu—who’d fallen into Wonderland, met the white rabbit, become both big and small, met and... since the Tim Burton adaptation had come out... kissed the Mad Hatter. Yes, he was certifiable, but after seeing Johnny Depp play the part, crazy had never looked so yummy.
She licked the frosting swirl and moaned as her taste buds erupted with sharp hints of tequila and notes of lime.
“I love this.” Tabby chuckled and blew out a puff ring of smoke. A nifty trick Alice had learned at culinary school. Pop rocks flash frozen in dry ice. “We’re gonna be rich. Oh hey, did you hear?”
After ten years of being best friends, Alice had grown used to Tabby speaking in stream of consciousness. She peeled the paper off her cake. “What?”
She nibbled, content to be lazy and eat slowly. The kitchen could be on fire and she doubted she’d get her tired butt off the chair. Her feet ached and her toes tingled. She wasn’t sure that was totally normal, but at the moment, she couldn’t even muster up a grain of ‘care.’ She was blissed out.
“K 1 News Now called this morning, wants to do an interview with you tomorrow.”
When the words finally registered through the fog in Alice’s throbbing head, her pulse fluttered and she sat up straighter in her chair. “No way! And I’m only hearing this now?”
Tabby shrugged as she popped the last bite of her cupcake in her mouth. “What? We were busy. Not like I had pet mice to do my bidding. Some of us,” she pointed at her chest and raised a brow, “were actually working.”
“Cinderella had mice, not Wonderland.”
“Pssh, who cares? I get them all confused anyway.”
“Sacrilege. Off with her head!” Alice shrilled in her best Red Queen impersonation.
Tabby rolled her eyes. “And that’s why you never get laid anymore. You. Are. Weird.” She patted Alice’s hand. “Honey, you do know they don’t actually exist, right?”
Alice chuckled. Tabby always gave her grief about her love of—okay... obsession with—all things Wonderland. “What? You mean to tell me the face painted man who crawls in my window and makes wild monkey love to me every night isn’t actually real?” She tapped her finger to her chin. “That could be a problem.”
Tabby chuckled. “I’ve got dishes to clean. I’d like to get home before ten anyway.”
“Ooh la la,” Alice winked and sat back, “another hot date with Mr. H.P.D.?”
Tabitha bit her bottom lip, a shy look in her eyes. “I don’t know, maybe.”
Alice giggled and rubbed the back of her neck. “Then I suggest you get those dishes done.” She winked.
Tabby ran back, a spryness to her steps Alice couldn’t hope to match. She was exhausted.
Not, “I was out working in the garden exhausted” either. More like, “I’ve run ten miles, hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, all while lifting twenty pound dumbbells” tired. She rubbed her nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache spreading behind her eyes and shooting down the back of her neck. She winced.
Too many long nights, too much stress of opening day, too much. She needed a break already. Tired as she was though, it was a good tired. She brushed some crumbs off the table, filled with a sense of accomplishment.
Alice sighed; content to stay put a moment longer. Tabby teased her about her lack of a love life, and even though she played along, the truth was Alice was beyond sick of being alone. She wasn’t that crazy. Really.
Her bedroom might be decorated a bit like an enchanted garden, full of potted plants and candles and gauzy silky drapings. And so maybe there were the wall clocks, faces painted to appear like the Cheshire cat, the Queen, and of course... handsome Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp. But that wasn’t that weird, right? She had a thing. Didn’t everyone?
Alice shook her head, slipped her shoes back on and with a heave, was headed toward the register when the front door jingled. She smacked her forehead. In her laziness, she’d forgotten to lock the door.
“Sorry, we’re closed.” She turned, spying an older woman—maybe in her late fifties—wearing a sad look.
“Oh my. I smelled something so heavenly and knew I must, must get a taste of whatever special surprises were in here.” She threaded her fingers together. “Truly, could you not find it in your heart to allow a tired old woman, frail too I might add...”
Alice couldn’t stop the smile. The woman had balls. She kind of liked her.
“Oh come on, Auntie,” the local island patois slipped from her tongue as she jerked her hand. “But lock that door behind you. I don’t have much left.”
Blue eyes, still as sharp and bright as they must have been in her youth, lit up. She rubbed her hands in anticipation. “I’ve heard so much about you, Alice Hu.”
Alice frowned. How did the woman know her name? Paper maybe? Had she given her full name? She rubbed her forehead.
The woman’s face went soft, eyes deep in contemplation. “Extraordinary likeness,” she spoke quietly and reached out a hand to frame Alice’s jaw. “Oh, Alice. I’ve found you.”
Alice’s heart clenched, she wanted to jerk out of the woman’s grasp, but something made her pause as an answering awareness fluttered desperate wings in her chest. Then the lady gave a tiny shake of the head and laughed, as if suddenly recalling where she was. She dropped her hand and took a step back.
Alice released a breath, suddenly confused by what’d just passed between them.
The woman flashed straight teeth at her. “Wild, reckless child you were. Head in the clouds, nose in the book. Hatter in the heart.” There was a lyrical, chiming quality to her laugh that made Alice think of bells. “But now you are a woman grown and my, what a woman you are. You look so much like her.”
This was all too weird. “I’m... I’m sorry,” her brows dipped, “do I know you?”
The old woman was now at the counter. Her clothes were stylish, fashionable even. But the fabric was unlike any Alice had ever seen. As if someone had gathered the finest spider silk, still sparkling with morning dew, and woven a pale white top from it. She wasn’t a large woman, but her personality swept in like a tidal wave, filling the room with its bubbling presence and making her seem much larger than she was.
“Oh, dear me, no.” She laughed, her blondish-gray curls bobbed attractively around her pixie face. “How could you? Why this is the first time we’ve ever met.”
Ookay. The woman was clearly one bat short in her belfry. “Right, well... let’s see,” Alice turned to the display case, trying to hurry things up, “seems all we’ve got left are the Red Queen’s Revenge.”
“Oh,” the woman shook her head, “that old hag? Surely you could have come up with something better. Off with your head.”
Had she not made that same joke to Tabby a few minutes ago? A shiver of strange zipped down Alice’s spine.
“What’s in it?”
“Umm.” It took a second for her to gather her wits. This woman was seriously weirding her out. Memo to her, check the web for any reports on missing mental patients. “Uhh, it’s red velvet. Frosting is Italian butter cream with flecks of pink peppercorn.”
Cupcake lady groaned. “As much as I despise that fat bag of poo, that sounds lovely. I’ll take one, if you please.”
“Sure.” She handed her the second to last cupcake. “Here you go.”
The woman took the cake, unwrapped it and took the largest bite Alice had ever seen a woman take. It didn’t even seem like she chewed, before she crammed the rest in her mouth. “Mmm. Ohhh.” She made breathy cooing noises the whole time, a look of pure delight creasing her brows.
Crazy or not, Alice bloomed with pride at the obvious enjoyment that had the other woman licking her fingers and pointing to the last one. “Yes, please. Thankfully I’ve no man to worry if my hips grow to the size of a hippopotamus.”
“Yeah, well that makes two of us.” Alice smiled her first true grin. “Here, on the house.”
The woman did another one of her man bites, sighed, and then patted Alice’s hand. “Oh, but, you do, dear.”
“Mmm? Do what?”
“You do have a man to worry about, although,” she leaned back on her heels and eyed Alice with a calculating glint, “he’ll go mad for each and every curve. Oh yes,” she nodded, now seeming to speak more to herself, “you’ll do very well.”
Was this woman trying to set her up with one of her grandchildren or something? Bet he was just as creepy and bizarre as the old crone.
“No thanks.” She frowned. Had it only been five minutes ago that she’d been having the best day of her life? “Auntie, I’m sorry, but it really is closing time. I have to clean up.”
The woman smiled a secretive sort of thing. “Of course you do, my dear. Don’t be late. He’ll be waiting.” With a jaunty wave, she turned on her heels and left. The door jingled behind her.
“Oh my gosh, Tabby.” Alice ran to the door and locked it. She leaned against it, heart beating frantically in her chest. “What the freaking hell was that?”
Tabby popped her head out of the kitchen, a frown on her full lips. “What?”
Alice pushed the teacup themed curtains aside and glanced out the window. Though the sun had set, the streets were still crowded with hundreds of tourists. Thankfully, crazy cupcake lady wasn’t one of them.
“That woman.” She turned, with a swift shake of her head. “She was nuts. Kept trying to set me up with someone. Total creep job.”
“Alice, are you okay?”
She stopped. Why was her friend looking at her like she was a bug under a microscope? “The woman?” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Ate my last two cupcakes.”
“No.” Tabby shook her head, her face a mask of confusion. “Honey, it’s been quiet as death out here. In fact I’d wondered if you’d fallen asleep.”
She laughed. “Tabby, shut up. You’re just trying to freak me out.”
Tabby planted her hands on her hips. She wasn’t laughing and now her look went from confusion to true concern. “Hun, are you feeling okay? Sleeping good?”
Her voice was soft and patient, but wrinkles marred the corners of her eyes. She knew that look, had seen it before. A long time ago. It’d haunted her then, it haunted her still.
Alice clenched her fists, her anger intensifying the dull ache in her skull, which in turn only wound her nerves tighter.
A million thoughts buzzed in her head. Was Tabby lying? Trying to make her think she was crazy? She didn’t seem to be. How could she not have heard the woman? Quickly her eyes zoomed toward the case. Empty. Not crazy. She licked her lips and gave a self-effacing chuckle. “Yeah, you got me. I fell asleep.”
Tabby shook her head. “You know what, sweetie. Let me call Beany. He can come help me finish up. Why don’t you call it a night, go take a bath, drink some wine and hit the sack? I think that’s what you need. Okay?”
Alice knew she wasn’t crazy. The woman had been there. As equally sure of that as she was, she also knew trying to convince Tabby of it would only make her seem crazier. Not less.
She pinched her nose. “Yeah, think it’s these heels. Air’s too thin up here.”
Tabby smiled and walked back to the kitchen. “Leave the keys on the counter. I’ll lock up.”
Alice undid her apron and tossed it onto the counter, knocking a white business card to the ground. That hadn’t been there before. Frowning, she walked over and picked it up, flipping it back and forth. The only thing on either side was a large picture of a white rabbit with the words: rub me.
With a shrug, she tucked the card in her bra, set the keys on the counter, and headed to her apartment three blocks away.
***
Steam curled around Alice’s face as she wiggled her pruny toes. She’d have to get out soon, but not yet. Instead, she took a long, slow sip of the tart red wine, studying the card.
No matter how many times she turned it, nothing changed. The smiling rabbit mocked her.
“That crazy lady probably left this just to torment me.” Finishing the last of her wine, she set the glass down and got out. It took a second for the room to stop spinning. A silly grin split her face. She felt niiice.
The tiny blare of her bedroom TV filtered under the crack of the bathroom door. She hated silence, especially because she lived alone. She quickly dried off, grabbed her boy shorts and cami top off the towel rack, and slipped them on.
She’d not been able to resist the items when she’d spied them at a local boutique shop. The cami was a picture of Alice, bent over a table looking at the plate of cake with the sign that read: Eat me.
She tied her hair back into a messy bun, quickly brushed her teeth, and groaned when red drops plopped into her white sink. Alice reached for toilet paper, dabbing at the nosebleed until it stopped. Stress always worked weird things in her body and this was not her first nosebleed. It probably wouldn’t be her last, either.
Satisfied she was done bleeding, she tossed the papers in the waste bin, grabbed the card off her washstand and headed to her room. Thankfully, because she was sure the room was spinning. Needing to lie down, she plopped into the tangle of sheets and sighed.
Every bone in her body throbbed and her muscles burned. But at least they were no longer stiff—the hot water jets had done wonders. Lifting industrial size mixing bowls all morning was no joke.
She flipped the card, obsessed beyond reason with why it’d been left there. Stupid that she should care. It was a dumb card. And yet...
Rub me.
Really? As simple as that?
It’s not that she hadn’t considered doing it from the moment she’d seen the card. But honestly, this wasn’t Wonderland. In the real world when someone left a card like this, that person was usually hiding in wait until you rubbed it so he could then howl in laughter at how stupid you were.
Of course, she was alone now. Her thumb twitched, the obsession intensified tenfold.
She laughed. “I can’t believe I’m falling for this.” But her head was a little swimmy, the room slightly out of focus, and she was feeling just crazy enough to give in to insanity.
She rubbed her thumb across the words and waited. A quickening, like the flutter of moth’s wings pulsed across her skin. Alice sucked in a deep breath.
The clocks ticked.
The fake laughter of news anchors blared through her TV’s tiny speakers.
She snorted.
Nothing.
“You’re such an idiot, Alice. Tabby was right—”
“You’re late,” a nasally voice said.
It did not come from the TV.
Alice screamed and shot straight up. Every nerve in her body tensed for flight or fight. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped. At the foot of her bed stood an enormous white rabbit in red livery, blinking huge bunny eyes back at her.
“No way.” She glanced at the card. It was blank.
“Come. Come.” He hopped toward the window, gesturing frantically.
“Whoa.” How much had she had to drink? Two glasses, three maybe? She rubbed her eyes. “You’re not real.”
He rolled his eyes. “As real as you, I’d reckon. Now come, come.” His hand...paws? ... were on the window sill. He pushed it up, letting in a cool hibiscus-tinted breeze.
“As if.” Oh my gosh, she’d cracked. Her mother was right. Too much Wonderland and sugar had finally rotted her brain.
“Oy, why must all the Alices be so vexing?” the small voice growled. He hopped back to her. “Come.” He held out his paw.
She scooted back on her heels, bumping hard into her headboard. “Get away from me. You’re not real. You’re not real.”
“Bloody hell, Alice, you called and I came. But I must get back to me Duchess. So please hurry.”
She shook her head, denying his words. Not real. White bunnies didn’t swear. Or talk. Yeah, they definitely didn’t do that.
He hopped up on the bed and her stomach dove to her knees when the mattress caved in. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. This is so not happening.”
Soft fur touched her bare flesh. She shivered as he grabbed her wrist in a surprising hold, taking them both toward the window. She dug in her heels, but he was really strong. All she managed to do was drag her sheets along with her.
“We’re late...”
“For a very important date,” she added, giggling with a note of hysteria.
His eyes crossed. “Yes, well... upsy daisy now.”
Then his paws were on her butt and she slammed her hands against the window frame. The crazy thing was trying to shove her through the window. She lived on the eighteenth floor.
“Hell. To the N. O.” She wiggled, struggling. Her muscles flooded with adrenaline. Fear was a raw, consuming thing. She screamed, crying for help.
But it was no use.
With one final grunt, she fell.
––––––––
Air surged past Alice in a dizzying rush. She threw her hands over her face, stomach tickling as she waited for impact.
But as the seconds ticked by, she cracked open one eye. She should have hit pavement and been a memory by now. “Oh, ah...” Words failed her. She’d expected to see blacktop, looming like a nightmare, instead... there was dirt. Everywhere. She was in a tunnel of it. Tree roots, gnarled and twisted, reached out toward her like writhing fingers in a haunted house.
And then the dirt was gone, and suddenly there was nothing but clocks. Masses of them. Thousands. Zooming past in a Dali-esque blur.
After a few minutes the tickling in her belly stopped, but still she fell. She huffed, wondering if this hell would ever end. Almost the moment she thought it, she was there. Wherever there was. She slammed her head and shoulders into something hard and cold, groaning at the webbing of pain that exploded in her body upon impact. It knocked her dizzy for a second and, when she opened her eyes, her vision blurred. The scent of crushed grass and sweet smelling flowers enveloped her in its heady embrace.
“The Alice girl is here.”
“Alice? Yet again?”
“Little girl. Little girl.”
“No, she is a woman, gnatty old fool. Look at those boobs.”
The voices were constant, random and sing-song. She shook her head and groaned. “My head.”
“She’s busted her head. What, what.”
“Ohhhh,” crooned a teeny voice, “the Hatter won’t like that.”
She froze at the sound of that name. Where the hell was she? She rubbed her eyes. It took a moment, but when she could finally make out what was before her, she couldn’t believe it. She grabbed her head. Flowers, too many different varieties to count, were looking at her.
Looking at her!
She yelped.
They blinked.
“She’s as loud as the rest. Truly, dearie, do ye not see ‘tis night?” a fluted yellow flower honked at her.
She had to get home. Maybe she was home? Maybe this was all a dream. A bad, weird dream.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
The voice was hot and gravelly, rolling over her body like a lover’s touch. She followed the voice and her thighs tingled.
It was him. Alice swallowed. She’d know the face anywhere. She’d seen it before. A long, long time ago.
She smiled, so many words on her tongue, none of them able to make it past numb lips.
It was hard to gauge his height. He was sitting on a chair, a cup of tea in his hand, staring at her with a hard black glare. There was violence and madness burning in that gaze. And something else. Something that made her burn, made her nipples tighten into hard, almost painful buds.
Last time she’d seen him he hadn’t looked so foreboding, or so sexy. She licked her lips.
Silvery moonlight made his hair glint with shades of the darkest chocolate. The pressure of his gaze felt like a hot brand.
Her pulse stuttered. Dreams shouldn’t make her so hot. Needy.
It hadn’t before. Then again, she’d only been 13.
“You.”
She bristled, not because of what he said, but how he’d said it. A depth of meaning had been conveyed in that one word. Anger, disdain, even hate. Alice held her chin up, but her nails left crescent marks on her palm.
His nose curled. “Bloody, damn fairy,” he spat.
Alice was so startled she couldn’t even speak. Why the hell was he so angry? What had she done? And who was this fairy? She rubbed the back of her head. Was she dead? Maybe this was hell?
With his dark hair and sharp brows, Hatter looked more like the devil than the white knight of her youth. The man she’d idolized, the very one she’d credited with saving her life. She could still see it in her mind’s eyes, her body lying weak and pale in the hospital bed, calling out for an imaginary savior. She’d never been more surprised than when he’d answered her...
But clearly that memory belonged only to her. He didn’t seem to remember her at all.
His lips thinned and a spark of something hot flashed through his eyes when he set his cup down. On freaking air! It literally hung, suspended as if by strings.
She’d dreamed of Wonderland many times, but never like this. Never with so much detail. She could smell the wind, and colors she’d never seen in her life dotted the landscape. Vivid didn’t even begin to describe this.
“Follow me.”
Was he serious? “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Alice bit the inside her cheek. An owl hooted and she shivered.
“Fine.” He narrowed his eyes. “Then stay.”
He got up and she gulped. Though he stood a distance from her still, she knew he towered her by a good foot. At five foot two there wasn’t much that didn’t. He turned to go and she clenched her teeth.
A thwamping sound rang through the sudden stillness of the field and her pulse thumped. She jerked, glancing over her shoulder. A chilling echo of laughter flitted through the dark silhouette of trees.
Just a dream. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Thwamp.
“You’re not really going to just leave me here, are you?” she yelled at his retreating figure.
He stopped and, even though it was dark, there was enough moonlight to the see the heated glare on his face. “Follow or stay.”
“Follow or stay. Follow or stay,” she muttered under her breath, but rushed to catch up when she heard the next slithering thwamp.
He wouldn’t look at her and he wouldn’t stop. Alice wanted to kick him. If this was a dream, he’d be nicer. Which meant it wasn’t a dream. But then there was that whole white rabbit thing.
Each step they took the more and more she seethed. One step blurred into the next and the next until she wasn’t even sure how much time had passed. Only that it’d felt like forever and the silent treatment was quickly starting to wear thin.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to be a little more polite.” The moment the words left her mouth she wanted to kick herself. Why the hell did she care?
He didn’t stop and the field was now no longer a field, but rolling hills full of ruts.
She panted, calves screaming as she gripped her side. Shoes would have been great right about now. Barefoot was so not fun, especially when dirt got between her toes and stones dug into her heels. But she would not stop and she would not beg him to either.
Since he wouldn’t talk and she couldn’t at this point, it gave her plenty of time to think. Whatever had happened tonight, she was pretty sure she wasn’t dreaming.
The sights, the smells, the burning pit of anger gnawing at her gut. No, she wasn’t dreaming. And she wasn’t dead. Because she was pretty sure dead people didn’t want to murder something.
She eyed the back of his brightly painted pin-striped suit. What was with the stupid get up anyway? Just how many pocket watches did one man need? She counted at least thirty, and that was on his back! Who did that? All her life she’d been infatuated by the man. Now...
She rolled her eyes when her heart fluttered at the sight of his broad shoulders. Stupid traitorous emotions.
A bead of sweat plopped off the tip of her nose. Annoyed, she wiped her brow. When would this torture end? Where was he taking her?
“Dammit!” she hissed when she stepped on a twig, its rough edge easily slicing through her heel.
Alice grabbed hold of a thick tree branch and hopped on one leg as she tried to peer at the bottom of her foot.
Blood. She growled, swiping at the wet warmth of it. “I could kill him. I will kill him. That bastard. Why am I following him? This is stupid, stupid, Alice. Why did you rub that card?”
“Alice!”
Startled to hear him call out her name, she glanced up. He was looking at her, his face stone cold, but his eyes held a frantic edge to them.
“Listen to me.”
She swallowed hard. His tone held a note of “Stay calm, and don’t panic.” Never a good sign when someone started a sentence that way.
A long sibilant hiss sounded in her ear.
She froze. Swallowing hard, she turned her face and came eye to eye with the black, beady eyes of a ginormous snake. A snake unlike any she’d seen before. Its forked tongue came to within inches of her nose. And now that she was aware of it, she wondered why the hell she hadn’t noticed the tree sported purple polka dots.
“Hatter,” she squeaked and slowly dropped her hand.
Her branch moved.
“Hatter,” she hissed, she couldn’t take her eyes from the beast, as if looking at it would somehow prevent it from wrapping its thick body around her own. “Help. Me.”
Strong hands latched onto her shoulders. Her eyes were still wide and her knees felt locked in place. Hatter pinched her and she jumped, glaring at him.
“Get behind me,” he said.
She didn’t need to be told twice. Alice stepped into the shelter of his back. Her fingers clenched the edge of his jacket, watching in horror as he lifted out a hand toward the creature’s broad head.
“And truly I was afraid,” his deep voice hypnotized her and she buried her nose in his jacket, “I was most afraid. But even so, honored still more that he should seek my hospitality from out of the dark door of the secret earth...”
There was nothing after that save the stillness of the breeze, the Hatter’s even breaths, and the wild rush of blood in her ears. It seemed an eternity before he turned.
“He’s gone, are you okay?” He touched her face and she hated that his soft touch felt so good.
“Does it matter? Do you care?” she snapped, jerking her face out of his hand. Even though that was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to touch him, to remember again the man who’d saved the dying little girl years ago, but she couldn’t forget how he’d been earlier.
His hand hung in midair for a moment until, with a slow nod, he dropped it. Hatter turned on his heels and started forward again. “Almost there,” he rumbled.
“Fine,” she said, equal parts wanting to cry and wanting to pick up a rock and throw it at the back of his head. But she did neither; instead she limped along behind him, her gashed heel stinging every step of the way.
Moments later, Alice was surrounded by a swarm of dancing fireflies. They zipped in and out through trees, lighting the canopy of leaves with their golden liquid radiance.
Hatter stopped. “Stay here.”
Their rest stop didn’t look like much. There were trees and glowing mushrooms, the spotted glowing kinds you’d see in cartoons and in an assortment of colors. A large swarm of fireflies congregated in and around them. She wiggled her toes, wanting to moan at the lush smoothness of soft grass beneath her feet. She needed to sit. Now.
“Whatever,” she groaned and plopped down. Her feet were a mess, covered in dirt and oozing blood. If there was a time to cry, now would have been the perfect time for it.
Instead she watched Hatter reach out and swipe at one of the bugs. It bounced around in his palm frantically.
He was saying something. Growling it actually, but she couldn’t hear and really, she didn’t care.
Mad as a hatter.
Why had she ever thought that was sexy?
––––––––
“What kind of black magic is this?” Hatter hissed.
Danika’s wings fluttered against his palm as she shoved and pushed at him. “Hatter!” she squealed, “for the gods sakes, open your palm! Damn you, man. You’re bending my wings.”
He shook his fist and eyed the little ball of light hard. “I told you not to bring her. Not only do you bring her, you bring her! What have you done? She should be old and withered, and yet she looks the same. How is that possible?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked when she didn’t answer quickly enough. He shook his hand harder.
“Open,” she roared, “or you’ll get no answers from me.”
He flung her from his hand. She rolled in a ball through the air before finally righting herself and glaring at him. Danika pointed her wand at his chest. “How dare you!”
“I dare much,” he growled. “What have you done, Danika?”
How could Danika have done this? How could she have returned that venomous, viperous woman back to him? How was it even possible?
How could he have these feelings for Alice, these soft feelings that made him face a snake’s constricting coils to help her? He should hate her, he did hate her. After all she’d done to him, he wanted to shake her, kiss her, whisper his undying hate in her ears. Hatter grabbed his skull, willing himself to ignore the huddled bundle on the grass behind him. Up is down, down is up. Emotions made no sense. No sense.
“Look at me, I say.” Danika snapped her fingers.
“What?”
Danika’s face crumpled. “Are you not pleased, Hatter?”
“Pleased.” He wanted to roar, wanted to stomp on Danika’s mushroom home and smash his fist through her tree. “Pleased?” he asked again. “Why have you returned her? How have you returned her? Wonderland said no. No. No.” He grabbed his head again. Dizzy, gods he could smell her. Like caramel and the salty brine of sea.
When she’d clutched his jacket and pressed her nose into his back, he’d been aware, so very aware. Every inch of his body screamed for her. Wanted her. She was his Alice, the one he’d surrendered his heart to years before. Wicked, wicked Alice. She’d whispered of love, touched his body, made him yearn and need.
Betrayer. His nostrils flared. Evil little Alice with the forked tongue, just like the snake. He should have let the snake have her. Damn her.
“It’s not her, Hatter.” Danika grabbed his fingers, peeling it away from his eye.
He shook her off. “Of course it’s her.”
“No.” Her curls bobbed around her tiny head. “That Alice is nothing more than a withered husk.”
For a moment, a yawning chasm of ice filled his empty, shattered soul.
Danika pointed over his shoulder. “That is her great granddaughter.”
Not the same Alice? “But her eyes, and the face. Pretty, pretty hair. Long and black with a widow’s peak. The itsy-bitsy spider crawls up the water spout...”
A sharp slap stung his cheek. “Snap out of it. Now is not the time to lose your wits.”
Hatter blinked. “Why her? I hate her.”
“Hatter, no.” Danika petted the cheek she’d slapped, her cold little hand soothing. “You do not hate her. You do not know her. She is not the same. I swear it.”
He grabbed his head, trying to recall why he’d been so angry. Trying to hang on and remember, lest he lose the thought like he’d lost so many others. “You reached into the same bloodline. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She gave him a soft smile. “Because I know you. If you’d known, you’d never have come to get her.”
He took a breath, and Alice was there, her sweet, caramel warmth permeating the breeze. Hatter looked over his shoulder. She sat huddled on the ground, staring at her foot, a tiny frown marring her brows. He’d been cruel, forcing her to march without shoes. Forcing her to follow without speaking a word.
“I can’t, Danika.” He shook his head. “Take her back. Take her home.”
“You know that’s not how it works. She’s here. For three days. Try, Hatter.” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “You must try.”
He sighed. Couldn’t Danika see it was hopeless? And now she brought him the granddaughter of the woman who’d betrayed him and expected him to what—trust the same blood didn’t run through her veins?
“Heal her feet. They... bleed.”
“Oh, Hatter,” Danika sighed. “Open your eyes, boy, see what I can, before it’s too late.”
He ran his hand through his wavy hair. “Wonderland’s not accepted her.”
She frowned. “She’s only just gotten here. Give her time.”
He curled his lips, always so positive Danika was. Every time it was the same thing. Next time. The next one. He was sick of it.
“No promises. Heal her feet,” he demanded again.
With a sigh, Danika flew toward Alice, becoming a golden streak of light that bobbed and weaved around her feet.
Alice yelped, snatching her feet back and then sighed happily when the bleeding stopped. Their eyes met and Hatter had no words, all he could do was stare and hope and hate. He clenched his jaw as Danika flew back to him.
“Take her to the waters, have her wash her feet. They’ll be healed after that.”
Hatter nodded his thanks, then walking up to Alice he cleared his throat. “Come with me,” he said, much gruffer than he’d intended.
She frowned, pulling her bottom lip between straight teeth. “Where?” Wariness shone in her gaze.
“Just... come.” He grabbed her elbow, wishing he had more kindness in him. She wasn’t the same Alice, or so Danika said, and yet... the truth was hard to reconcile.
Huffing, she stood and jerked her elbow from his lax grip. “I can walk just fine, thank you.”
Hatter led them to the fairy waters a short distance behind the glen. Fairies, looking like lightening bugs the way they danced above the surface of the placid stream, added a magical, almost surreal setting to their surroundings.
He pointed to a depressed section of verdant grass. “Sit.”
She lifted a brow, an annoyed look creasing her forehead.
“If you please.” The words were thick on his tongue.
Reminding him of a Queen the way she lifted her chin proudly, she sat cross-legged. “Well?”
Knowing he should apologize, not knowing how to even begin, he did the only thing he could think of. Hatter knelt by her side, a shiver rippling through him as her scent of caramel and sunshine tickled his senses, filled his head. He dipped his hand into the water. “Give me your feet.”
“Why? My feet feel fine, really?”
She grabbed hold of them, tucking them tightly against her shapely thighs. He put her through this, he’d make it right. Gently, he traced the instep of her left foot.
“Give me your foot?” he asked again, gently.
Her big brown eyes softened and she didn’t resist when he tugged it free. Dipping his hand into the chill waters, he scooped up a palm full and let it drizzle against her soft flesh. She moaned, when he rubbed it in.
“Oh wow, that’s so... wow,” she sighed, leaning back on her hands, silently opening herself up to him further.
He smiled, knowing the magical properties of the water did more than heal a scrap or seal a wound, the waters here were the purest essence of life. Making new what was old. He rubbed it in, kneading the hurt and rawness away.
Leaning in so close, feeling the breath of her body flit against top of his head, he licked his lips. Alice Hu, whatever incarnation she came in, had a way of affecting him in the deepest marrow of his soul.
Her body heat so close, it wrapped around him like hug, making him forget that he couldn’t lean in and kiss her, that she wasn’t his. That he didn’t want her. All he knew was this moment, this touch, the rhythmic movement of her breasts as she exhaled slowly.
His fingers trembled as he moved to her other foot, forcing himself to repeat the same torturous massage, trying in vain to forget how soft she felt, how good she smelled. How her lips parted ever so slightly, fuller on the bottom than the top.
Hatter swallowed hard, she wasn’t his. Not now. Not ever.
Jerking back, he waved his hand over her feet. His own magic ran hot through his veins as he called forth a pair of sparkling silver flats to cover her feet in.
Standing, he nodded, molars grinding so hard his jaw ached. He could never forget who she was. What stock she hailed from.
A snake could shed its skin many times in its life, but it never stopped being a snake. New Alice couldn’t be so different from Evil Alice.
What do you want from me, Alice? What do you want?
––––––––
They walked again. Thankfully Alice’s feet were fine. Which was amazing. One second she wanted to cry from the stinging pain, and then, the next second, the ball of firelight ran across her feet and she’d felt better. And then he’d washed her feet and she’d felt amazing. Not an ache or pain anywhere the water had touched. Like she was a new person. Well, from the feet down anyway. And though there’d been nothing erotic or even sensual about his ministrations, her stomach and heart had fluttered like a girl with her first crush. He’d washed her feet, stood, and stared at her.
Maybe it’d been her imagination, but for just a moment, an infinite second in time it’d seemed like he’d shared a piece of his soul, letting her peer deep into the burning depths of his heated gaze, but then he’d blinked and the spell (or whatever it’d been) had passed, leaving her shaken and tongue tied.
He seemed different now. Not completely kind. Hell no, nothing that drastic. But there was much less hostility, which, she supposed, was better than nothing.
“I’m...” he cleared his throat and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “The Hatter.”
Alice lifted her brow. “I pretty much figured that out.”
“Right,” he sighed and glanced to the side.
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “I’m Alice. Alice Hu.”
His jaw went rigid, but even so, her heart skipped a beat at the pure beauty and masculinity of his face. He was so much more than she remembered. Didn’t mean she’d forgiven him for what he’d done earlier. Not by a long shot.
But she hated silence. “So is this a dream, or what?” At this point, she was 99.9999 percent certain this wasn’t a dream, but she wanted to talk. Even if that meant talking with the most sexily infuriating man she’d ever met in her life.
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,” he said, words laced with a bitter sadness that made her heart tremble.
“Sure.” She was confused. Was he agreeing with her or not? Why did she suddenly want to wrap him in her arms? The haunting sorrow in his gaze touched something in her heart.
She set her jaw and tapped her hand against her thigh. The man was ridiculous, spoke in riddles, and yet—her stomach did a somersault—she couldn’t stop the mental pictures of him nude with her sprawled on top of him.
She groaned. He was mean. She didn’t like him. He’d freakin’ made her walk through a forest without shoes on. Her tender feet had gotten bruised and bloody and it was so easy to give into the hate, but then he’d saved her from that damn snake, washed her smelly feet, and nothing made sense anymore. Since the moment they’d left the mushroom glade, he’d been acting different. Not so angry and cold.
Stems of grass brushed against her ankles like the softest satin. Stars gleamed brighter than any diamond in the navy blue sky. Wind, pregnant with the fragrance of flowers, sifted gentle fingers through her hair.
“I’d swear I was drunk as a skunk right now, except for the fact that I don’t feel in the least bit tipsy. I just cannot accept I’m in Wonderland, though. This is ridiculous.”
A loud snore, like the braying of a donkey, startled her. She yelped and Hatter pointed to a shadowy lump beside them. A huge skunk lay sprawled on its back, a glass bottle by its head. Its bushy black and white tail twitched back and forth, tiny feet jerking like a dog’s when asleep.
“Is that a-”
“Words have power.” His eyes narrowed and he was looking at her different now, not shocked or amazed exactly, but different. He turned. Alice hadn’t been aware he’d been standing so close until suddenly it seemed as if he took up all her space. She licked her lips, skin tingling with a rush of blood. He looked like he wanted to say more.
“Alice-” His Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he were working up the courage to say more.
The hot shiver of the Hatter’s sherry-tinted breath fanned her face. She squirmed. She wanted to touch him, touch herself. Anything, just to end the madness of lust spreading through her veins like a sickness.
Then his gaze grew hooded and he turned back around. She sucked in a shaky breath, knees suddenly weak. What was going on? Hadn’t she just been pissed at him?
“What the hell happened back there? Did I make that thing come?” she asked his back.
He stopped and she caught back up to him. He looked down at her. “You tell me.”
Pulse trapped in her throat because suddenly nothing made sense, she grabbed his hand. “Why am I here?”
There’d been one other time in her life when words had shifted her reality, and it’d not been magic at all but a tumor the size of a golf ball in her brain. Was she sick again? Stomach revolting with worry she squeezed his fingers.
His jaw clenched. He looked at their clasped hands and she expected him to let go. Hatter sighed and pulled her in for a hug.
Stunned, she didn’t move. It didn’t seem like a kind hug, or even an I-want-to-strip-you-and-make-love-hug. He trembled and she sensed, that much like the snake, power rippled behind the touch and if he wanted to he could hurt her. Maybe he did want to.
A part of Alice wanted to shove him back, make him let her go. His hard fingers bunched into the back of her shirt. But she just couldn’t because this was the man she’d loved her entire life. The man she’d craved since age thirteen.
“You smell like cinnamon and tea,” she shyly admitted. “My favorites.”
He cleared his throat. “It is time.” Was his voice shaking? Time for what? She wanted to ask, but doubted he’d elaborate as he hadn’t done so yet and, if she’d learned anything in her short life, it was not to ask stupid questions she knew would never get answered. For now, she’d wait and watch.
Alice looked and then blinked, trying to rattle the image loose. Much like the fictional Alice, she was presented with a table, empty, save for the small slices of strawberry-festooned cakes. Each one had a sign in it. One read: Eat Me. The other: Poison. And she couldn’t stop the delighted thrill that zipped down her spine as she recognized one of her favorite scenes from the book.
Nibbling on her lip, she glanced at him. What was she supposed to choose? Alice hadn’t had a choice, so this was kind of different and whole lot confusing. Hatter didn’t move for one or the other and his blank face gave nothing away. There’d be no taking a lead off his cue.
Was he testing her?
She looked around for any sign or clue, but it was pointless. Nothing could or would help her. Taking a deep breath, she reached for the Eat Me slice. Just as she ripped the tip off, the sharp slap of his hand made her drop it. Shocked, she glanced at her stinging hand. “Did you just slap me?”
At least he had the good sense not to deny it. Most people would have said, I didn’t do that, or, that’s not what I meant. “Bad is good. Good is bad.”
Then he tore off two chunks from the Poisoned one and handed it to her.
The white frosting looked delicious, but the cake was green. And not St. Patty’s Day dyed green either. No, this was sitting out on the counter, rotting from humidity, green. She wrinkled her nose as the smell finally smacked her nostrils. Spoiled eggs and ten day old banana peels.
Her stomach soured. “You know, I’m not actually all that hungry.”
He rolled his eyes, popped his into his mouth and before she had a moment to protest, he’d slid hers between her teeth. Reflex forced her to chew, her tongue bursting with the unexpected notes of strawberry cordial.
But the delicious buzz lasted only a second before Alice was slammed with vertigo. The bit of rotten cake revolted in her stomach. She reached out blindly, almost falling as the world slid sideways and her with it. Like looking at fun house mirrors while the walls around her rolled and rolled. She screamed. A firm set of hands clamped onto her waist and then she could breathe, because he felt so real and immovable. Blessedly still. She gulped in air and clung like a baby monkey to its mother’s back.
“Breathe, Alice.” His hands petted her hair, calming the panic laying siege. After a second, trusting herself not to throw up, she opened her eyes.
Either the world had grown, or she’d shrunk. Grass towered around them.
“Come.” He gripped her hand, and she allowed herself to be led, still feeling drunk and wobbly.
He wound a tight path through the emerald forest. Any other time she might have enjoyed it, looked around and absorbed it all. She was finally in Wonderland. But right now she was too tired to care and simply wanted to get to where they were going.
In the distance she spied a teapot with a twilight meadow scene painted on it. As they neared, she noticed a white cottage covered in thorny roses at its center.
He walked up to the teapot. What exactly did he plan to do with that thing? Gah, she hoped that wasn’t his house. While fitting, she had zero desire to curl up on a cold ceramic floor.
Then he did a strange thing. Which was kind of stupid, because was the Hatter capable of doing ‘‘strange?’’ His name sort of implied the fact that he was as bizarre as seeing a man-sized white rabbit swearing at her.
He reached for the red door of the cottage and his hand phased through the teapot like it was little more than a mirage. The door swung open.
She frowned and tapped the teapot, shocked at its solidness. He looked at her and somehow she understood his intention.
“This is your home?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The way he acted, the apprehension in his gaze, she sensed this cost him a great deal. But she wasn’t sure why. Though she really shouldn’t care. He was a brute. Totally rude. And yet his hug and touch made her want to melt into a puddle of goo at his feet. Much easier to hate him when he was a jerk, and so much harder to do it when he wasn’t.
Damn her soft heart.
The cottage was quaint, the roof slightly sunken in, and the paint chipped off in spots or two. The thing was in desperate need of work and it was a wonder it still stood.
“Hmm. It’s... nice.” She didn’t want to lie, but really, it was pretty bad.
His lips twitched and, oh man, she forgot everything. His rudeness? Gone. His indifference? Gone, too. All she could see was that smile. She was pathetic. Seriously crazy. If he’d been sullenly handsome before, now he was HOT to the nth degree. Her stomach flopped.
The painting stretched, bulged, and when he stepped through it almost seemed to absorb him. He hadn’t released her hand. She didn’t have a moment to panic or think, disoriented the moment her foot slid through the door.
She was upside down. Or was that right side up? Hard to know for sure because the furniture and bookcases sat inches from her. But she clearly stood on the roof, or, rather, a roof beam. The door they’d stepped through was definitely below her.
Maybe?
Then the world around them rolled like the display of a slot machine and she plopped down on the floor, landing on her backside with a thud. She wasn’t moving, but felt like she was in the dizzying rush. When it finally stopped she rubbed her butt.
He snorted.
“Don’t you laugh,” she wagged her finger.
Hatter pressed his lips together and mumbled something.
She narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said...” and that was as far as he got before he started laughing.
She crossed her arms, but the longer he laughed the harder she fought not to join him. Finally, he held a hand out to her.
Grumbling, she took it and noticed the door was where it should be and the beams above her head. “That gonna happen again?”
His lips twitched. “No.”
“You know what, Hatter, I don’t think you’re as crazy as everyone else thinks you are. I think you’re a big fraud.” She tried to be stern, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.
Light danced in his expressive, suddenly warm brown eyes.
“Ah, I knew it.” She couldn’t resist teasing further.
He snorted. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
“And now it’s gone.” She rolled her eyes. “And just for the record, you might want to read something other than Poe. Incredibly depressing.”
He jerked, shocked. “You know Poe?”
She grinned, crossing her arms under her breasts and experienced a momentary thrill of feminine delight when his eyes zoomed to her chest. “I know a great many things, Hatter. Like the fact you find my shirt fascinating.”
He shrugged. She smirked—he hadn’t denied it. “Come on.” He turned and continued on down the winding maze of corridors. The cottage outside had been tiny, but this place was an M.C. Esher nightmare.
Hatter would walk through one door and suddenly it was day, the sun beating so hard, she’d been ready to chant: “I’m melting” in her best Wicked Witch impersonation. Only to then enter through another door and plop face first in a mound of silver dusted snow.
Shivering, rubbing her arms to generate any heat, she stuttered, “cold,” through clenched teeth.
Then they were walking through yet another door, and before she had a chance to breathe a loud sigh of relief at the blast of warmth, she was free falling. Again.
She threw her arms out, attempting to grab anything to stop the mind numbing terror of total darkness.
“Relax,” his deep voice rumbled next to her ear. She turned, blindly reaching out toward his voice. He grabbed her hand and the fear vanished, replaced by a thrill of excitement that bordered on lunacy.
Wind surged past in a sickening rush. All she could focus on was the heat emanating from long fingers wrapped around hers. Her stomach dipped when his thumb caressed her knuckle.
Then they landed on what felt like a hundred soft pillows and she lost him.
“Hatter,” she cried, scrabbling to stand. Everything was dark and she was disoriented, turning in circles, trying to find some source of light.
“Hold my hand.”
His hand slid into hers and for a second, a whisper in time, she felt the world shift. Small. Minutely. Like a butterfly’s wings taking off from a rose petal. She jerked, eyes widening, feeling his heat spread through her palm, up her arm. Her heart twisted almost painfully in her chest at the rightness of the very strange moment.
He didn’t slow his pace or turn as they advanced on door after door, each room more strange than the last. A green sky with blue grass. A room filled with thirty moons. Another smelling of the heavenly scent of vanilla and spice. One after another, shifting in a blurry daze she couldn’t track.
They stepped through a door and all she had time to do was groan, “Dammit.” Just how many times would she have to free fall?
She closed her eyes when she got too dizzy to keep them open from the constant rotation. Her hair hung above her head. Lovely. She was falling headfirst. At this point, she wasn’t even scared. Sort of like riding a rollercoaster twenty times in a row, after a certain point, it failed to terrify.
She wrapped her arms around his waist, snuggling in the best she could. With his big frame shielding her, she felt safe, protected in the madness of his home.
And then they were there. Landing gracefully on their feet. She looked, breathing in the wonder of a land that defied description.
The world sparkled with the deep hued shades of jewels. They stood on an open meadow. Flowers, petals looking like they’d been dipped in gold, swayed from a gentle breeze. A flock of birds gracefully sailed overhead, their birdsong a trilling, haunting melody that pierced her heart. And in the distance, she heard the faint roar of rushing water.
“My home is this way.” Somewhere between her falling at his feet, and her falling in his arms, he’d gentled. Reminding her forcibly of the man etched in her memory from years ago.
She nodded, feeling as if the world hushed around her, held its breath with an expectant hum.
Hatter led her to a white cottage with a red door. It looked exactly the same as the one painted on the teapot. She halted, narrowing her eyes.
His lips quirked and heat nestled deep in her belly.
“Don’t worry,” he shook his head, “no more tricks. This is home. You’re probably exhausted.”
He’d read her mind. For a second she’d been afraid she’d have to endure more tricks and turns.
A thick wave of dark brown hair fell into his eye and she felt the oddest desire to reach up and tuck it back into place. Run her fingers through it and see if it felt as soft as it looked. She bit her lip and nodded.
The moment they stepped inside, she waited for the dizzy inertia of a spinning room, but he’d told the truth. It was a simple living room. A blue stuffed love seat and rocking chair sat before a fire burning in the hearth. Beside it a wooden bookshelf lined with books. Colorful rugs were strewn haphazard around the low lit room.
She sniffed and her stomach rumbled when she identified the scent of buttery scones. Everything had a homey, comfy feel to it. Not at all what she’d expected from the Hatter’s home.
The crazy rooms, and falling into nothing, sure... but not this. This was nothing short of a dream home for her.
She’d always wanted to live in a place just like this. A simple, cozy, warm haven. She could picture herself here, reading in front of the fire.
Alice glanced at Hatter from the corner of her eye.
Or maybe making love, while outside a storm raged and the world seemed bathed in madness and chaos. Safe in her lover’s arms.
Heat crept up her neck and she rocked on her heels as she become aware of his large presence and the fact that they were very alone.
She swallowed, wishing she knew what he was thinking.
His eyes were shaded, and it was hard for her to make him out. But he kept casting her shifty glances. Maybe... he was nervous? Her heart skipped a beat—did he like her being here?
“This place is so awesome. So un-mad-like. In fact,” she gushed, not filtering her words, “in fact, I wish I could stay here forever.”
He dropped her hand. “But I am mad, Alice,” he muttered and the ease they’d shared just seconds ago vanished.
The air thickened with tension and even though he stood right next to her, it was like a wall had suddenly slammed up between them. If he’d had fangs, he’d be growling.
What had she done now? His moods were as random as trade winds, up and then down. Hot and then cold. For a second she’d thought he’d wanted her here, maybe she’d been wrong.
Her stomach rumbled, a loud sonorous boom in the stillness. He turned and walked into another room, leaving her to wonder whether to stay or follow.
A second later he came marching back in holding a golden brown bun in his hand. “Here,” he tossed it at her. “Eat something, you’re too skinny. Like all the rest of them.”
She caught the yeasty projectile. It was sticky and warm. It smelled so good and she was so hungry. Rest of them, who? She was curious and even recognized a hot tendril of jealousy spark through her veins despite her resolve not to care that other women had obviously tramped through his home. But she wouldn’t ask. It was the Hu pride.
He was hot one second, cold the next. It aggravated her, because she wanted to like him, wanted to see him as she’d seen him before. And just when she thought maybe she’d been wrong about him in the beginning, he did something to bring it back. The man was just like Wonderland, always throwing her off balance.
She tore into the bread with her teeth: not like she asked to come here. Tabby was right, she was sick in the head to be so turned on by him.
“Come on.” He turned and walked off.
“Come on. Come on.” She mocked. “It’s always come on with you. I’ve got a name, you know.” She swallowed the bite of bread, unhappy to find she’d liked it. It tasted like butter and honey. Any other time she’d lick her fingers to claim all the sticky goodness, but she refused to show him how much she’d enjoyed it.
“Alice.” Again, he sounded aggravated.
There’d not been a thought in her mind to do it, but, as if having an out of body experience, she watched her arm draw back. Saw the half-eaten bun sail out of her hand towards the back of his head.
The moment it hit him, she gasped, then covered her mouth, horrified. He jerked, came to a complete stop and grabbed the back of his skull, crumbs still clinging to bits of his hair. When he looked at her... all she had to say was, if looks could kill. But then his stare turned incredulous, as if to say: ‘did you really just throw that piece of bread at me!’
Her fear turned to laughter and she couldn’t stop it. She grabbed her stomach and pointed. “I’m so sorry. I have no idea what I was thinking. I’ve never...” Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as she lost all words and laughed until her sides ached.
His anger quickly subsided and he cocked his head as if confused by her. Which only made it funnier. He was the Hatter, yet she was the one acting like a complete idiot.
She held up her hand. “I’m sorry,” she huffed, gulping in air. “Sorry. Won’t do it again.”
“Yes, well, I... deserved it.” His lips tipped up and she knew he fought back a smile. And seeing that was like pouring salt on snow; it killed her laughter cold. She grabbed her chest as her blood heated and her head swim with naughty thoughts.
Like shoving the stupid jacket off his broad shoulders, stripping him of the colorfully striped pants, and then proceeding to lick her way down his body until she came to the bit of male beauty that would be hard and proud. Just for her.
She shivered. His nostrils flared, as if he sensed her thoughts. Something wicked, and not altogether displeasing glinted back at her in the depths of his chocolate brown eyes.
The room charged with a snap of sexual hunger so intense, so arousing, she knew if she touched herself, she’d be soaked.
His hot gaze danced across her form, lingering in all the right places. Heat coiled like a sling between her thighs. Focusing, trying to remember to breathe around the lump in her throat, she held her ground, pretending he wasn’t making her tremble.
Her reaction was more intense than any she’d had in years, maybe ever. She wanted him with a need that came a hair’s breadth to being insane.
His mouth thinned. “Come on. Please.”
She nodded regally, and tried to pretend his words hadn’t just turned her insides to mush, and followed him down another hall. This one was full of closed doors. At least twenty. The dimensions of the place made her lightheaded; it was small, yet large. Compact, yet unending. Madness. Like the man himself. Was he taking her to his room?
The thought made her want to purr.
Stopping at the seventh door, he turned the knob and opened it to her. “Is this okay?”
Her eyes widened as she stepped in behind him. “My room?”
Had it really been a dream? She could have sworn... She sighed. Seeing the clocks and scattered plants, all Alice could think was how drab it all looked. She’d gotten Wonderland all wrong. What must he think, seeing her room, knowing how silly her notions of his world were?
She felt his eyes on her, hot and searching. Drawn to him, she looked back. And for a moment it seemed like his eyes swirled with light, round and round and round. Mesmerizing her, locking her in place, black rolling into brown and then into amber. Around and around, over and over, pulling her in with its sad, haunting symmetry. A staircase that fell into forever, unending, unceasing torment.
Then he blinked, and it was gone. His hand hovered above her head, so close she felt the heat radiating from his palm.
His hand shook as it lowered inch by agonizingly slow inch. She moaned when he touched her— she couldn’t help it. His touch did something to her, made her feel alive, tingly and on fire. The sound spurred him on and, with a sharp groan, he wrapped a strand of hair around his shaking finger, lifting it to his nose.
He closed his eyes and inhaled. Tremors wracked his body as he moved closer. Something thick and large pressed against her thigh. She purred, responding to the primal lust. Alice wanted to touch him, hold him. She slid her arms around his back, wishing she could touch naked flesh, hating that he was so covered up. She settled for laying her head against his chest.
Bump bump, the beat of his heart was a song in her ears. Again her world tilted, flipped on its side, and made her question where up was, where she started and he began. She clung to him; he was the hope in a swirling torrent of senselessness.
“I know everything there is to know about you, Alice.” His voice, whiskey rough, was an erotic caress against the nape of her neck. “I always have.”
Alice’s heart thrilled, raced and she could taste the adrenaline surge on her tongue. But then he stepped away, and she felt bereft. She dropped empty arms as he walked away.
Hatter paced the length of his bedroom. His arms were crossed behind his back, fingers flexing as he contemplated what to do about Alice.
Danika said she wasn’t the same Alice. But she looked the same. From her almond shaped brown eyes to the beguiling widow’s peak at her forehead.
He rubbed his jaw, pulse thudding. She even talked the same—soft, with an exotic lilt to it. And her hair, all black and silky and when he’d inhaled he’d known she’d smell of salt and hints of buttery caramel. Just like the other.
He paused against his bed frame. But she did not act the same. Watching his world, her eyes sparkled with wonder rather than greed. She’d called a creature. Other Alice hadn’t been able to do that. She’d only been able to summon small things. A teacup, butterflies... his pulse pounded so hard he thought he’d choke on it.
Was this Alice really the one? Was she his? Blood rushed to his groin and he groaned. Danika wouldn’t lie; she was many things, but not a liar. She’d said this wasn’t the same girl and, as much as he wanted to hate New Alice for reminding him so forcibly of the evil one, it would be cruel and wrong.
Damn that meddlesome godmother. This was all her doing anyway. His nostrils flared, the essence of Alice’s scent lingering on his coat, his skin. She was beautiful and spirited. His lips curved in a slow grin. She’d thrown bread at him.
The minx.
Hatter couldn’t stop thinking about the skunk. She’d called it. With her silly nonsense words, she’d called it into being. Other Alice had manifested magic and he’d thought then she may have been the one, but it hadn’t been enough. Wonderland had said no.
But a skunk, a large, fat and drunken skunk, was vastly stronger magic than a mere cup of tea. His heart raced. And her look when he’d touched her, she’d not shied away from the contact but had leaned in. She’d wanted his touch and he’d wanted to keep touching and petting and caressing. Pretty, silly little Alice. Maybe. Maybe...
He jerked as if slapped; he’d not go down this road again. He punched the wall, heart hammering a wild rhythm in his chest. Sick beyond endurance, he slammed a mental door on that thought. He could not afford to grow soft.
To want.
She had to go.
“I am not yours, not lost in you. Not lost...”
––––––––
Alice lay in her bed. The constant tick tock tick tock of her Cheshire Cat wall clock kept her from sleep. She stared unfocused eyes at the ceiling fan, her breathing taking up the singsong rhythm of the clock. She shoved the silk sheets down, hot and confused, too awake to sleep and yet too tired to move.
It was strange, the dichotomy of feeling like she was at home, when in fact, this wasn’t her house and she wasn’t in her room. She’d thought crossing that threshold would somehow usher her back to her own time and reality. But no, she was still here—in Wonderland—stuck, maybe forever.
It was enough to make a person question her sanity. Too many times to count, she’d opened her door, thinking any moment she’d see her living room and hear the thud of Auntie Hamaka’s ten house cats running amok in the apartment next to hers. But each time she’d swing the door open, she’d simply seen door after door after door. Brightly colored throw rugs, frames with no pictures on the wall. Not her house.
Her stomach rose with each breath. The fan turned. She didn’t blink.
“Hello, dear.”
Alice yelped. “Bloody freaking hell!” She grabbed her chest and then did a double take when she noticed who was in her room. Crazy cupcake lady, but smaller. Like ten times smaller. Fairy size and flitting through the air.
“You’re that woman!” She stabbed her finger at her. “Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?” The last almost came out a wail, her words warbling and she clamped her lips shut on the hysteria threatening to choke her.
The fairy stared at her with sympathetic blue eyes, a soft smile on her round little face.
“I know how you must feel, dear...”
Alice snorted. “Oh, I seriously doubt that. What did you do to me? Who are you?”
Crazy cupcake lady held up pudgy little fingers, shaking loose a blond curl of hair. “I’ll answer all your questions, but first,” she pointed to the bed, “let’s do sit.”
Startled, Alice realized she’d stood to a defensive crouching position. How frightening she must look in her boy shirts and cami. She rolled her eyes at the absurd picture and plopped back down with a huff.
She eyed the little woman evilly.
“My name is Danika, fairy godmother extraordinaire, and this is very real.”
Alice lifted a brow. “I’ve pretty much accepted I’m here. How that is even remotely possible, I can’t fathom. But why am I here? Why can’t I go home?”
Crazy lady didn’t bat a lash. “I told you.”
“Umm. No, you didn’t. You laid a card on my table and walked off. You told me nothing.”
The lady rolled her eyes. “You really must listen. I told you, you had a man-”
“I thought you were freaking kidding. Like yanno, loco.” She rolled her finger against her temple. “Am I here forever? What’s happened? I can’t stay here, you know that. I’ve got a family. They’re probably worried...”
Danika held up her hands. “Three days, Alice. That’s all. If in three days you two do not fall madly in love, you’re free to go home.” She said it as if it wasn’t a huge commitment she asked for.
Alice wanted to laugh. Was she nuts? “Oh, is that all? Well, thank you for this honor.”
Danika frowned. “You’re... welcome?”
Alice scoffed. “Sarcasm, fairy. Ever heard of it? No, I will not stay here three days. He’s a tyrant. Do you know what he made me do? Walk barefoot for miles.” Alice curled her toes. “My heels were bloody-”
Danika nodded. “Yes. Yes, he came and saw me. Total misunderstanding— he’ll be much nicer now.”
Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “What? When? I was with him, we never saw you.”
“Yes, dear. In the woods.”
Alice’s eyes grew large. “You were the lightning bugs!” She chuckled, feeling stupid that she hadn’t put that together immediately. Lightning bugs couldn’t heal feet. Then again, it wasn’t everyday she discovered fairies really existed, either.
Danika bristled. “Lightning bug, indeed!” Her full face flushed a rosy red as she inhaled long and slow several times through her nose. “I am a fairy.”
Alice grinned. “Of course you are.” And suddenly she wasn’t mad, just tired. She wanted to go home, pretend none of this had happened. Pretend she hadn’t met the man of her dreams, the man she’d obsessed about as a child only to discover he wasn’t at all what she’d thought he’d be. “Why don’t we just cut the three days down to one? Chalk it up to a failed experiment and move on?” She laughed, a short humorless sound.
Very small hands gripped the sides of Alice’s nose, forcing her to look back at worried blue eyes. “This is no joke. You must know, he needs you.”
“Stop it.” Alice swatted the fairy off her.
Undeterred, Danika grabbed Alice’s cheek. Her fingers were cold and it was ridiculous how Alice suddenly felt like she was ten again when her mother caught her reading instead of doing chores.
“Send me home. Now.”
“I cannot. You rubbed the card. You agreed...”
Alice crossed her arms. “I didn’t agree to a damn thing. I rubbed the card, yes...” she frowned, man she’d been stupid to do it, trying to remember if there’d been any fine print. But the card had only showed a bunny with rub me on it. “I didn’t,” she asserted again.
Danika huffed. “Humans and your nonsense of science and disbelief...” she grumbled. “This is a world of magic and mayhem and rules do not apply here. You cannot control this chaos, my dear—you must let it be. You agreed by rubbing. Period. You must accept it for what it is.”
Alice jerked out of Danika’s hold. “And just what is that?”
“Truth.”
Truth? The fairy spoke of truth and Alice wanted to hit something. She’d spoken truth once before—and that truth had nearly ruined her life.
Alice had seen Hatter when she was 13. She’d known the encounter had been real and she’d told anyone who would listen.
Her parents had taken her to psychologists; her friends had given up on her. Called her crazy, psycho, a nut job. Eventually her mother had threatened to commit her if she didn’t quit talking like that.
So she’d stopped talking. She’d stopped telling others about it, and as the years wore on, she’d come to the realization it was easier to say they were right. It hadn’t been real. She’d never seen him. It’d been a dream, a result of a disease-ravaged mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her parents slept easier, she’d made new friends who knew nothing about her temporary “episode,” and the love that’d burned brighter than the hottest flame had cooled to an ember. She’d moved on. She’d still loved the Hatter and all his maddening ways, but as a favorite story. Nothing more, nothing less.
“He doesn’t want me.” The words spilled from Alice’s lips before she could censure her thoughts.
Danika bit her lip. “And that is partly my doing, love.” She looked suddenly anxious, flitting around Alice’s head in a dizzying circle.
“I wish you’d be still,” Alice grumped, “you’re making my eyes cross. What exactly did you do?”
The crazy fairy toyed with her fingernail. “You are not his first Alice. In fact, you’re not even his tenth.”
The words brought Alice up short. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried for decades, maybe centuries now-” Danika pinched her nose, exhaustion heavily lacing her words, “to find his perfect match. The Alice to offset the madness leaking into him.” She threw her hands wide. “With no success. Some feared him, others tolerated him, and still others coveted the power of the land itself. But none ever loved him.”
Alice heard Danika like a buzz of white noise in the background. Other Alices? She wasn’t his first.
“Did he sleep with them?” she snapped and then clamped her teeth shut, wishing she hadn’t blurted that out, but desperate to know. Who was Hatter? Did he have a sick kinky fetish to get it on with as many Alices as he could? Well he was S.O.L.. Alice wouldn’t be another notch in his belt. Hot or not.
Danika’s jaw dropped as if shocked. “No!” Her voice rose in pitch like a howl. “Dear me.” She grabbed her chest. “The man is not a pervert, dear.”
The furious pounding in Alice’s chest eased somewhat. “Then why bring so many Alices?”
“Because that’s the way of it here. Hatter and Alice, Big Bad Wolf and Red... the stories are written with a grain of truth to them. It must be an Alice.” She shrugged and Alice licked her canine, refusing to analyze why she suddenly felt like a huge burden had lifted.
She didn’t want to share Hatter with anybody else.
Shaking her head, Danika said, “But that is not all.”
Alice narrowed her eyes wishing the fairy would stop dragging this out. “Yes?”
Danika blew out a breath. “You see, I may have dipped into a certain bloodline. Brought back a ghost, if you will.”
“What?” Alice was totally confused.
Danika sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. “Many years ago I brought an Alice to the Hatter. She was a lovely thing. Doe-eyed and of gentle disposition.” She snorted. “At first anyway. I think he fell for her beauty more than anything.” She shook her head. “She was an awful woman. Wanted the power she could glean from the land. She did not want him at all.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me?”
Danika’s tiny hand traced Alice’s jaw, giving her goose bumps. “You two could be twins. He sees her when he looks at you.”
Alice sucked in a breath, finally understanding the bloodline reference and the cruelty of the woman. “My great-grandmother,” she whispered.
Danika nodded gravely.
And though she had no right to jealously, a flinty spark of passionate hatred flared to life in Alice’s heart. No wonder Hatter hated her. Alice loved her great-grandmother, now... because she was blood and it was the honorable thing to do.
But loving her didn’t mean Alice could forget being locked out of the house during the heat of the day because her comings and goings let in too many flies. Or being told not to eat the second piece of birthday cake because she’d get fat and ugly and no one would want her then.
The bitterness her grandmother had always thrown at her great-grandfather, calling him stupid and a hairy Okinawan who was no good for her and she’d almost had better. Should have had better...
In hindsight, the crazy mutterings made more sense. But anger solved nothing. Jealousy was useless. Obviously it hadn’t worked out between them, but that past was coming back to bite Alice in the ass now because she wasn’t her grandmother. She was nothing like the old shrew and yet Hatter judged her based off that.
She looked at the little fairy. “My mother always told me it was uncanny. I’ve seen the pictures. We look exactly the same.” Deflated, she leaned her head against the wall. No wonder Hatter had been so cruel. She understood it, didn’t mean she forgave him, but she understood it now. “Why in the hell would you bring me here? He’ll never be able to look beyond...” Alice traced a hand down her body.
Danika grabbed Alice’s numb fingers and gave them a gentle rub. “You must make him see you, Alice. You.” She shook her finger for emphasis. “The moment I saw your grandmother my body shot with sparks of right. But I know now it wasn’t for her— it was the bloodline, the eventuality of you. He’s never responded to any of the Alices the way he did her. But how he responded to her is but a drop in the bucket to the way he feels for you. I know my Hatter and I know you’ve completely disrupted his narrowed worldview. I believe the only reason why he got swept up in that Alice was because he sensed as I did the tremblings of your coming.”
Alice snorted. “Oh yeah, cutting up my heels was his way of showing his undying devotion.”
“Does he not show any warmth toward you? Any sort of spark?”
Alice remembered his touch, his eyes... how they’d gazed at her, as if seeking to slip into her soul and she shivered.
Danika smiled. “Aye, you call to him. You are his, Alice. I know it. Now we must convince him.”
Alice crossed her heels and shook her head. “What if I’m not ready? Huh? What if I don’t want to?” A part of her totally did, but another part, the rational side of her was afraid. She had a life back home. She couldn’t be expected to stay here forever. Could he come back with her? Did she want him to?
Danika alighted on the end of her bed. “He’s dying, dear.” The fairy’s words echoed with anguish so thick Alice’s throat tightened.
“Dying?” she whispered.
The fairy looked around the room with a sad smile and as she did the walls literally seemed to vanish into mist, revealing the outside beauty of nature surrounding his home. “He is Wonderland. This beautiful madness? It’s all a product of his deliriously wicked mind. It’s lovely chaos, and it’s consuming him. Surely you’ve noticed his preoccupation with riddles and gibberish?”
Alice bit her bottom lip, rocking backwards. Dying? The Hatter? The beautiful, sexy man who made her want to scream and throw herself on him? “You’re lying,” she hissed, her lungs heaving for oxygen as the images conjured made her want to weep.
Alice might be upset with him, might even want to hurl sticky buns at his head every once in a while, but she couldn’t imagine a world in which he didn’t exist.
“I wish that I were.” Danika’s lip quivered.
Alice swallowed hard. “But, how can I save him?”
“Love.” Danika smiled. “True love. He must find his mate, his perfect match and equal. She is the only one who can pull him from the ever increasing insanity of his mind.”
The enormity of that burden was daunting. How could she do that? He didn’t even like her. “What if I’m not the one? What if you’re wrong again?”
Even saying it hurt. Did she want to be? She’d never been so angry, or so aroused by anyone else. For years Hatter had been her constant thought. What if he could never get past her looks? She couldn’t help who she was and she’d never be content in a relationship if he wasn’t as wildly in love with her as she was with him. Especially if he only considered her a replacement for the one he’d really wanted.
“You are. I know it,” Danika said, cutting into her thoughts.
“Oh yeah, how? He thought he was in love before— you said that yourself.” She lifted a challenging brow. “He might still be in love with my grandmother.”
Danika pressed her lips together. “Wonderland did not accept her and Wonderland is not just a place in a book, Alice. Wonderland is an extension of the man himself. Wonderland will open like a flower to the sun, the land will roll and the wind will hum when the true Alice is found.”
Her heart sank like a rock. “Well there you go,” she muttered, “it hasn’t done that. Obviously, it’s not me.”
Danika shook her finger. “Your time is not yet up. You’ve only just met; it takes longer than a mere night for true love to bloom.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Well if that’s what you’re basing it off of, it sure as hell takes longer than three days.”
“Not so, dear. True soul mates know. They always do.”
Alice couldn’t stop the nagging thought that she had known. Even at 13, she’d fallen in love. As much in love as a child could be. But he didn’t remember her. That much was clear, because he’d made no mention of that earlier meeting.
In all her years, she’d never once heard her great-grandmother speak of the Hatter. Alice would have guessed the woman hadn’t even known of his existence. And yet she did and when Alice had spoken of Hatter in her hospital room, her grandmother had been there. It’d been her great-grandmother who’d insisted her mother take Alice to an asylum. That spiteful wench! Alice ground her molars as fire burned in her gut.
How could he ever see beyond that?
It hurt thinking he didn’t remember her. Didn’t see her. She saw him— all of him. It’d taken years to excise Hatter from her heart.
At twenty-four, she was okay with that and was ready to move on. To find a real love and a real man. To get married and have kids.
To live in the real world and not in the book.
And now this evil little fairy came and told her, he needs you. He doesn’t know it yet, but he needs you, Alice, and she wanted to cry. Because a part of her had always needed him. Hatter was her white knight, he was the hero of her every fantasy. When she’d dated at home, she’d always sought some aspect of him with guys and had found every last one of them wanting, because in the end, they weren’t him.
Only Hatter had those soulful eyes that made her melt, the full bottom lip that made her desperate for a taste. The shoulders, so strong, firm, offering reassurance when she’d fallen into total blackness. The Hatter she’d always pictured within the pages of her beloved book. Not the slapstick caricature of the cartoons, but a hero. A savior to a frightened little girl lying in a hospital bed.
How she’d tenderly rubbed her fingers over pages with any mention of him on it, her small heart swelling with an impossible feeling of love, tenderness, and a yearning for something she hadn’t been able to comprehend then.
In her way, she’d always loved Hatter. With a madness that had consumed her. A madness she wanted more than anything to embrace now.
But she knew if she took this plunge, if she chose to believe it was true again, that this was real, she’d never be able to forget. Never be able to pretend again. She’d be ruined for anyone else. She licked dry lips, pulse beating so hard she felt the echo of it in her head. But wasn’t she ruined already? She’d never been able to date a man for longer than two months before she was finding excuses to dump him.
The flood of emotions she’d bottled away for years, burst forth. She loved him and she could no longer pretend it wasn’t so.
She sighed, body warm and alive and filled with a desperate need to go to him—the arrogant brutish jerk who couldn’t remember her. But she’d make him remember. No matter what and in the process she’d make him forget her great-grandmother. Alice was not her, and she’d make him see that.
She flattened a hand on her nervous belly. Somewhere in this crazy house he existed. “Three days to make him love me?” She glanced up and Danika nodded. “I want to break the curse.”
Danika’s smile was radiant.
“But I can’t stay, fairy. You have to understand. I can’t just bail out on my family. I have to go back. At least for a little while.”
Danika inhaled. “If it is meant to be, it will all work out in the end, Alice. You just wait and see. Trust in this, in him, make him love you, make him see you, and it will work itself out.”
A cold chill nipped at Alice’s nose. She shivered, startled to notice Danika beginning to turn amorphous. She hovered like a ghost surrounded by light.
“Love him, Alice. Only love him.” The ephemeral ball of light whispered before disappearing in a sun fire burst.
Alice hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking, staring at the door as if she’d divine an answer from it.
Three days.
She stood up and, before she could second-guess her decision, she went to the door, turned the knob and stepped out into the hall. Empty portraits stared back at her. Vines, not there before, crawled like green fingers through cracks, covering the wall in a living canvas. She walked; as she slid her hand along the wall, a trail of tiny purple flowers blossomed under her touch.
It’d only been a short walk from the living room earlier, but now she found herself walking through a maze of twists and turns.
“Hatter,” she called quietly. Afraid to speak too loudly, afraid she’d lose her nerve.
“Alice.” That deep voice, like a fiery caress, made her gasp and turn.
He leaned against a wall. The jacket he’d worn earlier was gone now. A white shirt, top three buttons undone, tapered to his body, outlined taut curves and gave her a tantalizing peek of tanned male flesh.
She licked her lips. I am woman, hear me roar, became a thunderous backdrop to the wild beating of her frantic heart.
“I... I wanted to...” She cleared her throat, realizing she was still staring at his sliver of nude flesh. Her fingers clenched.
He smiled with a wicked gleam in his eyes. He knew. She lifted her chin. So she found him attractive. She didn’t care if he knew. Three days, three days to stop being mousy, shy Alice. Three days.
“I wanted to see you. I missed you.”
He shoved off the wall and gave her a smile with no heat. “I’m assuming you’ve finished your cozy tête-à-tête with a certain fairy?” Disgust laced his words.
“How did you...” Then the light bulb came on, literally, a ball of silver light flashing above her head. Talk about weird. For a second she wondered where clichés had originated and if, perhaps, they’d come from a place like this. A place where words had power.
Of course he’d know. She wasn’t his first. Alice buried her nails in her palms.
A moon, heavy and round, materialized, flooding the hall—which now looked more like a garden than a hallway—with light. A gentle breeze, redolent with the sweet smell of fresh grass and rich earth surrounded her.
She looked around in awe. “What is this, Hatter?”
He was silent so long, she didn’t think he’d answer. “It’s me, Alice. It’s my magic, my moods. I create all this,” he tapped his head, “with just a thought.”
She wanted to tell him she knew that, that she’d wanted to know what the place was and if it held any significant meaning to him, but words failed her. Suddenly she wasn’t standing before him in boy shorts and a cami, but a frilly blue dress with thigh-high striped stockings and large, chunky heels.
She planted hands on her hips, fighting the grin, and tapped her foot instead.
He grinned. “Though I find I prefer you like this.”
For a second, she thought she’d be naked. But she was once again wearing her boy shorts and cami. His look, his voice, it did something to her. Curls of heat spread between her legs, tightened her belly, made her nipples tight. He was so beautiful. Like a gothic devil with his shaggy dark hair and sensual lips that promised wicked delights..
“Are you searching for me, Alice?” The teasing glint fled and his voice went empty and hollow again. Almost like he didn’t want to have fun with her, didn’t want to be easy going.
She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
His hard gaze was steady. Such a short distance between them— it would take nothing to close the gap.
She’d had boyfriends in her life. Losers. Winners. None of them made her feel what she felt in that moment. Heat. Fire. Longing so profound she wondered if it were possible to die from it.
She wondered how her great-grandmother had acted. Alice could only picture her as she was now—hunched over, an old, old woman well past her prime. How had her grandmother seduced him?
Because she wanted to be just the opposite. Alice never wanted him to see her grandmother again.
Be yourself, the echo of her mother’s gentle words flooded her mind.
He stared at her, waiting for something. For some sign. A truth to pass between them, a kindred sharing. Some awareness of who he was.
Alice remembered an elective she’d taken in high school. Who knew the meaningless English lit class would someday come to good use? Since he seemed to love Edgar Allen Poe so much she’d start there.
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness-”
He closed his eyes and his breathing hiked. She took a timid step forward.
“-and usually prefers silence to saying something...”
He recited the last part with her. “Which is not everything it should be.”
He stepped forward. The air shivered between them, a tremble, a kiss of wind at her temple. Her hand was on his cheek, the whisker-roughened skin tickling her fingers.
Haunted eyes stared back at her.
She pulled his face down until their lips nearly touched. “I’ve known you all my life.”
He gripped her fingers, squeezing hard.
“I discovered you when I was 10.” She looked deep into his eyes, peering into the mad soul, and poured out her truths. “I saw more than pages or a name in a book. I saw a brave man. A kind man. Even then I knew, even then I craved that which I could not name. And when I was 13...” she swallowed, wanting to share, wanting to see a flare of recognition in his eyes, a remembered memory.
He looked at her, brows drawn, waiting for her to finish. She couldn’t, not yet. If he didn’t remember, if he hadn’t cherished it as she had, it would be a wound.
She shook her head and smiled. “And when I was 13, I knew. I always knew, Hatter.”
“Alice, don’t. Don’t say these things. They aren’t true.” Wine-tinted breath stroked her lips and she sighed. And though his words begged her to stop, his hands wrapped around her waist like a vise, defying her to step out of the circle of his arms.
“I wish I was lying. I wish I didn’t feel this. Do you have any idea how hard it was to be in love with a man in a book?” She closed her eyes, aching as the memories flooded her. “It’s always been you, Hatter.”
For a weird second, she was sure the grass beneath her feet trembled. She looked at him, his gaze riveted to her face, searching her, like he was trying to peer into her soul.
He shook. “Three days, Alice. Three days and you’ll be gone just like your wicked grandmother. She also gave an oath of love.”
“I. Am. Not. Her.” She shook her head. “Three days to prove to you that I,” she grabbed one of his hands and forced him to cup her cheek, “am real. Three days to make you see me. Not her. But me, little Alice Hu. Lover of all things Hatter.”
He didn’t yank his hand away. “No, Alice.”
He smelled of sweet smoke and wine. Such a delicious combination, it made her want to purr and curl her toes into the dewy grass.
Alice stopped thinking, stopped wondering right from wrong. She wanted this. Always had. She laid her head against his chest. The muscle flexed beneath her cheek.
How would she ever be able to leave?
––––––––
Alice slept. Her silky black hair trailed along the white pillow like cracks in the earth and he ached to touch her. To kiss her gently awake. To watch her eyes grow soft and liquid with lust, with love.
Hatter gripped the door frame. Once he’d been certain she’d fallen asleep, he’d tiptoed back to her room and stood outside, watching. Hoping. Dreaming. Hating.
Hating his existence. Hating her for coming. For looking so much like the other one. Hating her because he needed her so much, knowing she’d leave him like all the rest.
Each Alice had been an adventure. Each wild, unpredictable incarnation had imprinted an indelible mark upon his soul. He remembered one who’d loved to fish out treasures from the sea and another who’d spun dresses from the cotton candy orchards. Some had sat three days locked away in their rooms, never venturing out, never trying to know him. He’d enjoyed some more than others and at the time had mourned their not staying.
In the end they’d all left, ripping out a piece of his soul. For a time, he’d grown excited knowing another Alice would come, dreaming the next one would be different. But after several years the constant parade had lost its zeal and he’d yearned for the moment they’d leave him to his solitude.
She sighed, and rolled over. Her outstretched arm pointed toward him. A wild sleeper, she’d moved from one corner of the bed to the other, as if seeking something, even in sleep. Her fingers curled and her mouth tipped down.
So damn beautiful.
Skin the color of wild spring honey with hair like shadow, hanging long and low, with the tiniest widow’s peak on her forehead. A short thing, this Alice barely reached the top of his chest. Petite, but full figured in a ripe, luscious way. Her hips flared out, and his heart pumped harder. She was the perfect size to hang onto while she rode him, passion gleaming from the depths of her big doe eyes.
Heat pooled in his groin. It grew stiff, frustratingly so. But he did not touch himself. He’d stopped doing that a long time ago, when the other Alice Hu had left. After her, he’d sworn never again. Never again would he allow himself to care because to do so would weaken him.
It’d been years since she’d left and, with time, he’d realized he’d not loved that Alice at all. He knew because he’d survived, but it was that knowledge that made him fear to love. Because though he’d not loved her, the weeks that had followed had been some of the worst in his life. Only Danika’s stubborn willfulness had brought him back from the fog of his mind.
The episode had so frightened Danika that she’d stopped bringing him Alices for a while and he’d reveled in the peace and quiet thinking surely Danika finally understood there was no match for the Hatter.
Hatter leaned against the door, his eyes drinking her in. His body trembled remembering the rush of heat and fire that’d blanketed him when she’d touched him and forced him to touch her. This Alice was more dangerous than any of the others because not only did he not mind her presence, he sought it out like a man parched for drink. She needed to leave. To forget him in the hopes that he could forget her. In the hopes that, someday, he’d not be plagued with night terrors, with the dreams of having a life he was never supposed to have.
He was the Hatter, a lunatic, a madman. His life was nonsense and mayhem. Everyone within the Kingdom said so. So had the other Alice Hu— she’d hurled the words at him like a blade, cutting him to the quick. He ground his jaw.
This Alice whimpered. He wanted to rush to her, soothe her. Touch her fine skin and inhale the sweet scent of her body.
His mouth tipped, remembering her startled look in the hall. The shorts that had exposed a long expanse of thigh. He’d nearly come undone. It had been all he could take to stand there and watch, his throat working with a need to yank her to him, to beg her to end his madness.
And he couldn’t stop the queer feeling that they’d met before. But she hadn’t looked like this. He frowned and grabbed his head. Why couldn’t he remember?
All he knew was that when he looked at her he heard the haunting strains of a repetitive beeping noise. But then the sound vanished and he was left with questions.
She mumbled.
She’d quoted Poe. So different than all the others, even her grandmother had never done that. Evil Alice had never tried to know him. But this Alice made him want to know her.
Other Alices had lied before. Some had claimed love, others kindness. None of it had been true.
His jaw flexed.
Why did he want to believe her?
“My Hatter,” she murmured, pink lips curling into a slow smile and his heart turned over. Lovely. Deadly. Peril. He closed his eyes and backed slowly out.
***
Ignore her. Make her want to leave.
The room trembled as a thousand clocks rang loud with the new hour. He stared at one in particular— a simple clock. No adornments, nothing about the small round pocket watch seemed particularly valuable.
He traced the grain seam, fingers gentle, the wood smooth from years (or was it decades? centuries? he could never remember anymore) of touching. Time. Always too much of it, and never enough.
It ticked on, endless, unceasing, unmerciful.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Unable to roll the hands back, unable to make it stop. Moving, always, always moving on and on and on. Marching forward in an endless cycle of time, time, time...
He drew his hand back, squeezing his eyes closed. Beautiful brown eyes filled his head. The scent of vanilla was so strong, he swore he could still smell it.
Satin skin, buttery brown, smooth and delicate. Hair as black as midnight. His body strained and he hardened. It made him sweat. Made him need.
He would not surrender. It was madness. Wonderland would say no and she would leave. As it’d always been.
But he’d never wanted another the way he did her. The moment he’d seen her, something inside him had quickened. Finally, he’d thought. Finally here. And that had confused him. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Her with the vanilla sunshine-y smile.
The widow’s peak, alluring, sexy, devilish. Beautiful, dangerous creatures, black widow spiders were. Luring you in with their beauty. Killing you without remorse.
“Dangerous creatures. Dangerous.” He closed his eyes, resting his head against the mantle. “Dangerous, dangerous beauty. Beauty. Beautiful. Alice,” his voice cracked.
She’d leave him. Like all the rest. He must make her go.
His spine stiffened, fingers clenched against his thigh. Did she think of him at all? Even a little? Beautiful, sane, wicked little Alice?
Tick.
Tock.
Time moved on.
––––––––
Alice jerked to a sitting position, tired, and just this side of pissy. Sunlight poured in through the window. She glanced around: her room was the same as it’d ever been.
Just a dream. Maybe, she’d call in sick. A horrible thing to do to Tabby, and it was only the second day of her grand Cupcakery opening.
With a loud sigh, she got up and headed to the shower. But when she reached the bathroom door, there was no bathroom. It was the most enormous and empty walk in closet she’d ever seen. It stretched for miles.
Not a dream. Or a dream within a dream, she thought of Hatter and her pulse sped. Where was he? Was he thinking about her?
She glanced down, she didn’t want him to see her in the same clothes, but there was nothing here. She wished she had some clothes, something sexy, something that would forever erase any memory of her grandmother from his mind.
And this time when she glanced up, a crushed velvet gown hung from a hanger in a shade of burgundy so deep it almost resembled blood. Velvet dresses had always made her think of fake wigs and hideous dollar store Halloween costumes. Plus, it looked several inches too long, but... she shrugged and slipped it off its rack. Beggars couldn’t afford to be picky. It was either this, or wear the same thing for three days.
She wrinkled her nose at the thought, took her clothes off, and was pulling the sleeves on when she grumbled, “give anything for a toothbrush and shower right about now.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth her tongue tingled with the sharp nip of mint. Her body shone with a wet sheen, and the scent of flowers filled the room.
She hadn’t bathed, and yet, she was clean. Man, if she could patent this back home, she’d make a killing.
The dress was a perfect fit. But she didn’t question it, it was Wonderland, nothing seemed to follow any conventional rules of reason. Most especially when it came to the Hatter.
The dress fell to mid-thigh. Thankfully, she had great legs. Her stomach fluttered and she wished she had a mirror.
A displaced shiver of air brushed against her back.
She turned and there was a mirror. Suddenly she wondered, was Wonderland responding? Was the wind right now humming and the land rolling? She strained to listen, but there was nothing but empty silence.
Her heart sank and she shook her head. Silly Alice... hoping for what couldn’t be. Of all the Alices in the world there was no way she’d be his perfect match. The odds were more astronomical then winning the lottery ten times straight. In all of history, she was his Alice. The thought gave her a pang and she had to take several deep breaths before she could shrug it off.
Alice studied her reflection. The dress was tight, but comfortable. Though, she didn’t like the sleeves. Instantly they vanished, exposing the long lean muscle of her bare arms.
“It would look a lot better with a choker collar.” The fabric moved, sliding up her neck until it resembled the choker she’d requested.
She pointed her toes. He’d put her in heels last night. “Thigh-high boots.” The softest black suede she’d ever felt in her life suddenly hugged her legs. A stupid, wide grin covered her face from ear to ear.
This was crazy. She was crazy. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out. Free clothes— it was enough to make her head spin with dizzy possibilities.
Alice had gone through a Goth phase in a high school, much to her mother’s everlasting shame. She’d even managed to sneak an Alice dress replica to prom. She’d poofed her black hair and touched up her face with a light tint of lip gloss and a few strokes of mascara. A large black and white striped bow was the only accessory she’d worn. Rather than make her look like a Lolita, the effect had been stunning.
That’d been the night boys had finally started noticing her. Overnight, she’d turned from the nerd carrying around the worn Alice in Wonderland book, to the hot nerd carrying around a worn copy of Wonderland. It’d also been the night of her first real kiss.
Clinton Issac. Tall soccer player. Gorgeous, and with the cutest dimple in his right cheek. She’d closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and the rest was a gross blur of slobber and sweaty hands trying to unclasp her bra.
Gross kiss notwithstanding, she wondered if lightning would strike twice. She bit the corner of her lip and wished.
A large stylish bow materialized in the palm of her hand, a small blood ruby winking from its center. She slipped it on, her stomach a nervous mass of butterflies. What would the Hatter think of her now?
Two days left.
Feeling like she might puke, she walked out, not knowing what she’d see today. Now that she was here, she was ready and willing to embrace the impossible.
The hallway was just a regular hallway. She frowned, disappointed for a quick second that it all seemed so mundane. There were no empty frames on the wall, no vines appearing like slow moving snakes. Instead, the walls were painted with fresco designs. A carnival at night, its neon lights aglow.
She narrowed her eyes and walked to the wall. It all looked so real and when she closed her eyes she couldn’t help imagining the happy roar of a crowd. The sway of rides. For a moment, she could almost smell the greasy whiff of corndogs and funnel cake. Her stomach rumbled, snapping her instantly back to reality.
Food. Time for food. Lots of it. With a little sigh she turned on her heels—and smacked head on into an unmovable wall.
“Oww.” She rubbed her forehead.
Hatter chuckled and the vibrations that laugh sent through her body weakened her knees. His hands slid down her arms and his touch was like fire. Her skin prickled as every cell became hyper-aware of his proximity.
“You look...”
Her stomach flopped. Did he like it? She held her breath.
Then the heat in his glance died, leaving his eyes cold and distant. “Hungry.”
The switch was almost too abrupt to follow. Hungry? She screwed her face up. “What?” After all the time she’d taken with her appearance— that was all he had to say to her? What about that initial heat, the look that said he wanted to turn out all the lights and do naughty things to her? She stifled a sigh of frustration. She wanted that heat back.
“I’ve not fed you well.” His deep voice rumbled.
She should be more than annoyed. She’d dressed up for him, tried her best to turn his head, and all he could talk about was food. In high school, that sort of passive aggressive rejection would have sent her scurrying back to her Wonderland book, too embarrassed to try again.
She pressed her lips together. That was the old Alice. The Alice that had been convinced by friends and family that her dreams were all just that—dreams. This Alice knew better. She knew her dream was real—he was standing right in front of her. And she wasn’t giving up without a fight.
He waited, a strange wariness in his dark eyes.
“I think food is a great idea. I’m starving.”
She didn’t think he was aware of the way his body heaved a gentle sigh as the tension flowed out of his bones. She wasn’t sure how he’d expected her to react, but she was glad she hadn’t given a voice to her annoyance over his less than desirable reaction to her attire. There would be plenty of time to be alluring later.
Besides, when he smiled like that, her heart did a crazy tilt that left her feeling almost breathless. He really was gorgeous. She let him take her hand.
He led her back down the hall and then they were there. Wherever there was? They were still in the cottage, she supposed, as they’d never actually walked out... and yet, she was now in a garden.
She glanced behind her, staring back into the hallway, and shook her head with a tiny shrug.
A sturdy white tea table sat in the middle of a large swath of sunlight, bathing the garden in a heated buttery glow. Roses, dripping with scent and a multitude of colors, covered the garden from the ground up. Tiny yellow butterflies flapped lazy wings from petal to petal. It felt like stepping through a Monet.
She smiled and clasped her clammy hands together. “High tea?”
He shoved blunt fingers through his thick wavy hair, his posture unsure as he nodded. “If that’s okay?”
Alice was proud of herself for not hopping and skipping around like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. She sat, trying to look elegant, but she was afraid the way she was dressed, she looked more like the best friend in Pretty Woman. Low brow hoochie, though the heat returning to his eyes made her think... maybe he didn’t mind?
Dainty trays of food manifested, filling the table’s top to capacity. Teacakes, finger sandwiches, salad, fruit, and cheese cubes as far as her eye could see.
She groaned, mouth salivating at the sight.
Two teapots appeared. Hatter grabbed the one with steam rising from its spout and poured a generous amount of the amber liquid into her cup. The heady aroma of anise and five-spice curled under her nose like a fog bank. She inhaled, taking the scent deep. Like a fine wine, it flooded her senses.
“Thank you.” She grinned, adding “I feel like I should be wearing gloves and a bonnet or something.”
Cream lace gloves, with a string of small pearls laced at the side, appeared next to her hand. She snorted. “I have got to watch what I say here.”
He glanced at the gloves, staring at them so hard she was sure he’d say something. But he didn’t. Instead he dropped a sugar cube into his tea and nodded toward the bowl.
“Yes, one, please,” her voice quivered a little. The cube dropped into her cup with a soft plop, disappearing in moments. Alice slipped the fingerless gloves on, just to have something to do and nodded. “Am I decent?”
His brows lowered. “For what?”
“For tea, of course.” She rolled her eyes, laughing.
The cup in his hand paused at chest level. “I wouldn’t know. Tea is just tea.” He shrugged and then sipped.
Embarrassed, she pressed her lips together. “Of course.” Suddenly, she felt ridiculous in the gloves, in the dress, in the top hat that’d appeared from thin air atop her head. It was silly of her to get so excited. Just because this was straight out of her favorite scene from Alice in Wonderland. Just because it was the scene where she’d always felt the Hatter’s presence the strongest. She swallowed the tea, but hardly tasted it. This was so stupid, so impossible.
“But...”
Alice hated that her heart fluttered. She didn’t want to care. Damn him, how many times would he make her feel like a fool?
“You look very good to me.”
Her gaze shot up, locking onto his. His compliment echoed in her ears and she suddenly realized she was smiling. Pathetic— she was so pathetic. She hadn’t been a virgin for some time, and yet right now her stomach tickled and her knees knocked. He made her feel like she was back in high school, gazing adoringly at Clinton Issac, waiting for the day he’d finally notice her. All over one little compliment.
Her smile wilted at the edges. Clinton had been an awful disappointment. She swept her eyes over Hatter’s face. Would he be, too?
“What’s your real name?” She hadn’t meant to ask him that, but it just sort of plopped out of her mouth. He looked at her, head cocked. Her eyes widened and heat rose in her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that-”
He held a long fingered hand up. Her stomach dove, remembering the feel of those hands on her body last night. How those hands had dipped lower on her waist until, for a moment, she’d thought he’d grab her. Pinch, knead, do something. Fire licked her veins and she guzzled more of the tea, eyes burning as the hot liquid scalded her throat.
He gave her a weak grin. “The longer I stay, the less I know? Hatter? Mad Hatter? T. T.” He shook his head and stared at his hands as if he could divine the truth of the universe from them. He growled and rubbed his eyes. “I... can’t, remember. Too long ago.”
She was sorry she’d asked him. A frown tugged at the corners of his full lips. She wanted to smooth the anxious lines between his eyes. Instead, she plucked at the hem of her dress.
“The longer you stay? What do you mean?”
He looked up, butter knife held loosely in his hand. The smile she’d glimpsed only last night, the real one, the one that peeked out when he wasn’t afraid to relax, came out for a fleeting moment.
“I was a man once.”
She lifted a brow and gave him a knowing grin. “Oh, I think you’re still a man.”
His lips twitched. “This,” he gestured, taking in their surroundings, “this is all an illusion. Frightening fragments of time and space, magic, moment, memory. Thoughts tumbling, tumbling down.” His eyes grew distant and she knew she was losing him to the thoughts in his head. She tapped his arm, bringing his eyes back to her with a jerk.
“Illusion? Madness? This place doesn’t seem so mad.”
Hair slipped into his eyes. Emboldened, she reached up and patted it back.
He stilled. She curled her fingers into a fist she brought quickly back to her lap. “What I mean is,” her words faltered only a little, “I love this place.”
“Why?” The question tore from someplace deep inside him. She sensed his desperate desire to understand her, understand why she felt as she did.
“There’s magic here and rooms that lead to nothing. Clocks that tick in perpetual motion, flowers that come alive at my touch, and...” there’s you... She looked down, distracting herself by taking a bite of the lemon curd laden scone. The sweet tang tingled her tongue and she moaned, a little jealous at his cook’s ability to make such delicious curd. Her stuff was good, but this was like biting into a lemon plucked fresh from a tree with a drizzle of sugar on top.
“So good,” she cooed.
She felt his gaze like a brand. “What was the last part you did not speak?”
He’d caught that. She wiggled, took a deep breath and gathered her courage.
“I want to know you, Hatter. Is that so strange?”
“Yes.”
She licked her lips, the tip of her tongue swiping up a crumb from the corner of her mouth. His eyes homed in like a beacon and it was unnerving, exhilarating. She touched her chest, feeling suddenly very hot.
“What am I to you? You do not know me.” His voice dripped scorn, anger, and something else. Hope? Maybe.
She drummed her nails on the table. She knew he liked his poems. Pride shaded the corners of his lips when he threw out a particularly obscure one.
His hands were long, fingers strong and firm. There was strength in those hands; she’d felt them tighten at her waist. He wasn’t an idle man with hands like that. Many might be tempted to think he drank tea all day and guzzled wine all night. Mad as a Hatter, they all said, but though, at times, he seemed to lose touch with reality, there was a hawk’s gaze behind those eyes. A quickness that saw more in a blade of grass than many could read within the pages of a book.
And the hell of it was she didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. Alice had dreamed of him for years, talked to him, told him her most cherished and heartfelt dreams, knowing in her child’s heart that he heard her, understood her, and knew her just as well.
“I know we have two days, Hatter.” She did not wish to give him hope. She had a life she needed to get back to. Responsibilities. She had a Shoppe to run and Tabby was probably crazy with worry. Not to mention her mother and father were probably, even now, calling every cop on the island to do a thorough search for their missing daughter. They’d all think something horrible had happened to her.
Somehow, someway she’d figure out how to save Hatter, how to get Wonderland to accept her. But she couldn’t stay permanently. If there was some way to hop between realms, then that could be a definite possibility. But she had to go back eventually.
The light in his eyes dimmed and he sat back, staring out at the garden with unseeing eyes.
Her fingers shook as she reached for a small bowl of grapes. “The food is wonderful,” she said, desperate to get him to look back at her. She hated to see the sadness touch his eyes.
“Leonard will be pleased.”
Her lips quirked and she glanced around. A tiger-striped butterfly touched down on the table. Its gossamer wings moved gracefully. The animals and flowers were so normal today. She’d kind of hoped for more, maybe a butterfly with pads of butter for wings or rocking horse flies. Of course, that had been a cartoon and she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. “I’d like to tell him thanks. I know I love it when a customer tells me that.”
He nodded, tapping the other teapot on the table. “Leonard, awake. Alice wishes to thank you.”
Shock made her drop the succulent red grape an inch from her mouth as the furry head of a tiny mouse popped its head out.
“Oh my gosh!” she squeaked. “A mouse. A...a-”
The food that’d settled in her stomach with the sweetness of sun warmed honey, suddenly felt like a brick. She breathed hard around the gag.
He rubbed black little eyes, large ears twitching as he looked around with a furtive sneer. “Mice!” His high-pitched squeak matched her own. “Where? A pox on them.” The teapot rocked precariously as he shook a tiny fist. His nose wrinkled at a furious pace. “Nasty flea ridden vermin they are! And in me garden no less.”
Huh? She looked at Hatter. What was... didn’t the mouse know... he was the mouse?
Hatter patted Leonard’s head with the indulgent grin of a proud parent. “Leonard’s my chef, and friend. Are you not, wee one?”
His voice had gone soft, gentle. The cadence left her spell bound, watching as a shaft of light suddenly filtered through a hole in a fluffy white cloud, illuminating his features. He looked like an angel.
But only the fallen would make her fell the sudden violent lust rushing hot through her veins. She swallowed hard.
“Right o’, guv’nor,” Leonard chirped. “Indeed.” Black beady eyes glanced up at her.
Alice tried to see him as Hatter did. Soft brown fur, long whiskers twitching with each breath. The little eyes turned soft, filled with light as he reached his hand out to her. “Oh aye, yer majestic Hatter, she is a lovely one. Ain’t she?”
His hand was still open, plump pink fingers curled toward her, and she realized he wanted to shake hands. She smiled. He really was kind of cute. Alice gave him her finger and he shook it.
“I loved your food, Leonard.”
He beamed, winked at Hatter as if to say I-told-you-so, and turned back to her.
“I’m a bit of a foodie myself,” she said.
“Are ye now?” Leonard twitched in delight. “And do ye prefer the sweet to the savory, as I do?”
“She owns a Cupcakery.” She glanced up at Hatter who’d answered for her. “The creations would make you green with envy.”
How did he know that about her? Had all the other Alices baked too? She bit her tongue at the irritating thought.
Leonard gave her a sage nod of respect. “As it should. As it should.” He raised his arms high above his head, exposing sharp teeth and a pink tongue as he gave a mighty yawn. He smacked his lips and patted his head. “Perhaps, Alice girl, we’ll swap recipes.”
“Did you make the curd too?”
For a second the sleep left his eyes and he nodded. “Me mum’s recipe, God rest ‘er soul.”
“Best I’ve ever had.”
“True enough.” The little mouse accepted the compliment with the air of one who knew they weren’t idle words, tapped the side of his nose and then yawned again. “Had meself a frightfully long night, Miss. Apologies,” he slurred the last and then sank gracefully back down into the pot.
She giggled. “What in the world could keep a mouse up all night?” She looked at Hatter and the laughter died in her throat. He was giving her that look again.
The look that stripped away all pretense, that said he was looking at her soul. A woman could melt into that look, lose herself and never find her way back home. She gripped the edge of the table.
“Have you eaten enough, Alice?”
She shivered, warm, but not because of the sun. His voice, rough, scratchy, set her body on edge. Alice nodded, not able to speak.
“Come.” He pushed away from the table and held his hand out to her.
Holding his hand felt as natural now as breathing. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, she moved into step with him, getting inside his bubble just so that she could feel the heat from his body.
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t move away.
“Where are we going?”
He was leading them deeper into the garden; a black wrought iron fence in the distance drew closer. The garden slowly morphed from swaying flowers to towering tree trunks whose overhanging branches obscured the sky.
The moment they stepped through the gate, it was like someone had grabbed an enormous window shade and drawn it across the sky. The sunlight melted into moon glow. Stars studded the sky like thousands of glinting diamonds. The royal blue veil of the heavens was broken only by an occasional fluffy white cloud floating past. The night smelled of heat and exotic spices. Somewhere, frogs croaked a gentle song. She shivered.
“Where are you taking me?”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. Her heart thudded. “A secret,” was all he said.
It was becoming hard to remember why she needed to go home. Why staying here was a bad idea. When he looked at her like that, like she was a precious jewel and he was the dragon sworn to protect it, she forgot lots of things.
Something in her recognized that for the first time, she was truly beginning to feel alive. That the world before was the dream, and this one was the truth. That she’d finally come home. Scary how good the thought was.
A small clearing opened up, revealing a placid lake that stretched a good distance in every direction. Bugs darted and zipped over calm water while small bubbles popped at the surface. Cattails swayed gently.
“It’s beautiful.”
He shook his head. “Not this.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him what, but he was already leading them straight toward the water, splashing in, and giving her no choice but to follow. She braced for the cold, but it never came. It was warm, soothing. They sank in, water covering their heads. She held her breath.
Everything was black. How long would she have to hold her breath? Did he know where they were going? She looked around, searching for a cave, an opening with a pocket of air. Trying to stave off the panic, she hoped it wouldn’t be too much longer. He wouldn’t hurt her. He might want to, but he wouldn’t. She know that, trusted that, felt it in the depths of her soul.
They sank deeper and deeper and she was growing more and more dizzy
She tried to yank her wrist out of his hand; she needed to get back to the surface. Air was a desperate need now, her body shaking and her throat on fire. A blue glow radiated in a flash around them. He looked at her and frowned.
“Alice?” The glow added shadow to hollows, giving him a sinister appearance. “You can breathe here.” He demonstrated by inhaling deeply.
Her lungs burned, they were empty, deprived of sweet oxygen. She’d never gone more than thirty seconds at the beach without gulping for air. Black dots swam in her vision.
She wanted to trust him so badly.
He shook her shoulders, wearing a frantic look. “Do it, damn you, breathe!”
And then the matter was out of her hands, instinct took over and she sucked, waiting for the fluid to fill her lungs. Drown her.
It was thicker than air, but clean, fresh with a hint of salty brine. She could breathe. She sucked in harder, greedy for more. And then she laughed a desperate choking sound of disbelief. “I’m breathing water.”
He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Then that hot gaze of his, the one that made her want to strip her clothes and his off, demanded she look at him.
“You must know, Alice, I would never hurt you. Never.” His knuckles grazed her cheek and she felt that touch move like lightening through her limbs. Her nipples hardened into painfully sharp peaks.
His eyes danced with light again, a swirling pattern of movement, a chaotic rhythm that matched the frenetic beat of her heart. She held her breath again as he leaned closer, his body heat pressing against her. Lips touched hers, a feather soft whisper at first, hesitant. Exploratory.
She curled her fingers into his jacket, and he groaned. The rumble vibrated her chest and then he was not so soft, not so gentle. He was demanding, kissing, touching, tasting, sucking on her lip, and swiping his tongue across the seam.
She parted her mouth on a loud moan and he darted in, massaging her tongue with his own. He tasted so good, like spring rain and wildflowers and then his hands cupped her ass, making her burn and shiver as she moaned loud and long.
Alice pulled him closer, wishing she could crawl inside him, lose herself completely to the untamed sensations he yanked from her soul. Her fingers slid through the thick waves of his hair. Soft silk.
He was kissing her face, her cheeks, her jaw, her forehead, the tip of her upturned nose. Her body was alive and dizzy with joy.
She slipped her hands under his jacket and taut muscles flexed under her touch. If she were a cat, she’d be purring. She pouted when he pulled back. His breathing was hard, but his grip on her was tender. The caress of this thumb trailed fire, raised goose bumps.
Had anyone ever looked at her like that before? She touched the corner of his mouth, a mouth that had consumed her. Passion lay buried in the man, deep and bottomless. She wanted more. She wanted all of it.
A loud croak shattered the mood. Without her even noticing, they’d stopped sinking. She was standing on the bottom of a lake and a 50 foot frog stared at them.
“Hatter?” She gripped the collar of his jacket.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” His nose was in her hair. Alice felt hot and cold at the same time, her body tense and loose. How could having a man sniff her hair turn her on so much?
She dropped her head onto his chest, loving the sound of his heart beneath her ear.
“Would you like to see?” He sounded anxious and nervous. Sweet, she smiled.
Did he realize how hard it was for her to focus when he touched her? She looked back at the big, ugly frog and wrinkled her nose. “A warty frog?” His eyes glinted. “Oh, Hatter,” she couldn’t help teasing him, “just what every girl wants to see when she’s out on a date with the hottest man alive.” She fanned her face, not noticing how he’d stilled.
He dropped his hands, almost making her stumble back from his abrupt release. She frowned as he walked toward the green-skinned beast.
Just like before, when it seemed she was finally starting to make headway, he’d gone cold and walked off. She clenched her fists, nails biting into the palms of her hands.
Damaged goods, he was totally damaged. So why did it not make her want to run away?
It went deeper than her lifelong obsession with all things Wonderland. This wasn’t a book, and he wasn’t a faceless ideal. The Hatter was in pain. For reasons she could barely understand, she didn’t just want to help him; she wanted to make him better. Wanted to see him whole again, the perfectly wonderful madcap Hatter.
She rubbed her arms and followed. He stopped by a webbed foot. The frog didn’t budge. It just sat, staring at them with the empty eyed stare of a predator.
She tiptoed to Hatter’s side and slipped her hand into his lax one, trusting him, though her knees knocked having to stand so close to the thing.
His fingers were spread, loose, and for a second she worried he might reject her. Then he sighed and gave her a squeeze.
“Ancient frog beneath the waves,” his deep voice rolled through the eerie blackness, “hiding treasures of olden days.”
The frog’s giant mouth opened a red yawning maw of death. Its pink tongue whipped out and wrapped around their bodies, the sticky wetness making her yelp. And then, it swallowed them.
Alice held tight to Hatter’s hands. She’d show him she didn’t always panic, even though in her mind she was frantically screaming.
Thankfully, the ride didn’t last long. She landed with legs sprawled, flat on her butt.
Hatter, of course, looked as devilishly delicious as before. Not a thing out of place. His clothes were perfect, his brows were raised, and every hair on his head was exactly as before.
He was laughing, and while the sound made her legs weak and stomach flutter, she was not happy that it was at her expense. Alice held her hand out to him with what little pride she had left.
“You know you could be a gentleman and help me up instead of staring at me like I’ve grown a third eye.” Her cheeks burned when he jerked her up.
His hands rested casually on her hips. It seemed like he found any reason to touch her now. Not that she minded; she only wished it wouldn’t always be so hot and cold with him.
She crossed her arms and huffed.
He grinned and her heart jerked. He was breathtaking when he did that.
She turned her face to the side and then her eyes widened when she finally noticed where they were. And the moment she noticed, the cave came alive with a roar of tick tocks.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands of clocks hung and sat in every conceivable corner of the place. They were mounted inside the rock face, beneath the thick sheet of glass she walked on. Funny ones, nautical ones, bedroom clocks, grand domed clocks with large golden chimes dangling beneath; she never knew there were so many different types.
Each clock was set at different times, so that some rang the top of the hour, while others were just starting a day’s rotation, and some even spun in reverse.
“What is this place?”
He dropped her hand and walked to the center of the room, spreading his arms wide. “My tick tock life. Six o’clock, teatime. Don’t be late. Time. My time.” He was mumbling again, his eyes glazed, lost in a different time and place, looking lovingly at each clock.
It was easy to believe he was crazy when he looked like this. His smile became a frown. He looked at her and the madness evaporated. “I’ve lost my way, Alice. I’m no good. I’m lost in time. Pieces of myself. Do you understand?”
She’d started walking toward him, before she was even aware of doing it. Like he was the spark to her fire, she needed to touch him, needed it as much as she needed her next breath. She reached, smoothing her fingers over his pinched brows and he shuddered.
“What happened to you, Hatter?”
He took her hand, fingers tight on her wrist.
“Is it Wonderland? Has the magic made you crazy?”
He shook his head, eyes wounded, distant. She gripped the side of his face, forcing his eyes back to her and away from the madness that always pulled at him.
“I am time here. Don’t you see?”
What did that mean? “Are you saying you are time?”
He nodded.
“You?”
“Sometimes...” he whispered, “Sometimes I wish I could leave.” His voice was so low she barely heard him. As if he was afraid to speak too loud. “To be free, unhindered. To work with hands,” he blinked, and she knew he struggled to remember something in the way his shoulders tensed up, “but I can never leave. And you never stay.”
She dropped her hands. “But I’ve never been here before, Hatter.”
He gripped his hair with his hands and yanked, hair stuck out in different directions. “Always you. Haunting me, driving me crazy. Making me want what I cannot have.”
She denied it, shaking her head so hard the top hat slipped off. “Hatter, that wasn’t me. That was my grandmother. I’m not her!”
He growled and walked up to a cherry wood mantle that appeared like a specter behind him. He rubbed his fingers against a clock face with the obsessive compulsion of a man who’d done it many times before.
“All the same,” he muttered, “you all come, so beautiful. Smells,” he shuddered, “gods you all smell so good and I want you, but you’re all selfish, spoiled, and the land says no. And so you go and you never look back; you never remember the man lost in time. Time moves and it gets easier. I can breathe; I can forget. But then it’s time again and I’m weary, weary...weary of you all.”
She covered her mouth, a lump in her throat, and hot tears behind her eyes. He didn’t want her at all. Danika was wrong—he couldn’t forget her grandmother, or apparently any of the others. She wasn’t special to him. How could she be? They barely knew each other. She was just a face passing through.
He turned, brown eyes sparking with frosty hints of frightening anger. “And then you. You’re the worst of them. Quoting poems, telling me...” he swallowed, “things that I cannot believe. Trying to understand me. Always touching me, the heat of your body reaches to me. None of the others did that, none of the others cared. They only wanted the power or they wanted to go. You want to go too, don’t you, Alice?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
She lifted her chin. “Because I’m not.”
“Why!” His face contorted into a mask of rage and it was more than anger, pain glittered in the depths of his eyes.
Alice squeezed her eyes shut, her truth burning the tip of her tongue. Did he really want to know, did she have the strength to tell him?
She gazed at him. Others might see him and see anger, fury, blinding rage. But she couldn’t. “Because...” she swallowed, opening herself up to someone in a way she’d never dreamed to do again, “when I was 13, I-” had brain cancer. She couldn’t say it. She desperately wanted to. Wanted to explain, but she didn’t have the strength to dip into memories that brought back nothing but pain and paralyzing fear.
“What?” he demanded. “I share my soul with you and you give me nothing? What!” His demanded, and her heart bled.
“Oh, Hatter.” She covered her face. “I... I want to, but...”
“But,” he sneered, “but, but, but! Prove to me you’re different and choose to stay, Alice. Be mine. Choose me.”
She jerked, wanting to so bad. More than he could ever know. “What if I jump back and forth, visit family. Then...”
“No,” he growled it and her eyes widened.
“It can’t be all or nothing, Hatter. I’ve got responsibilities.” She didn’t want to go. But why did he demand all or nothing? Why couldn’t he share her? Fact was she’d be more here than there, but she didn’t want her family to worry. She wasn’t like him— this wasn’t home. Why couldn’t he understand that?
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another. Damn you, Alice, damn you all!”
He threw his fist out. It crashed into a clock, forever silencing it beneath crushed glass. Like a frightened, wild beast, his eyes were wide—the whites large and the irises menacing. Heaving air like a bellow, lungs and chest expanding like the devil come to claim her soul.
But instead of frightening her, it only made her sad. Yes, she wanted him to see her, Alice Hu, the slightly geeky girl who loved to read, bake cupcakes, and paint her toenails. The girl who’d dreamed of someday becoming a success like the rest of her sisters.
But she couldn’t blame him. How long had Alice after Alice been thrust at him? No wonder he didn’t remember her. She couldn’t imagine having to endure this torment year after year.
“I’ve only got two days left, Hatter.” She held up two fingers. “Just two. Why fight?”
He cast his eyes down, jaw clenched, muscle ticking.
She thumped her fist against her thigh, the clocks’ ticking sounded like thunder in her ears. “Can’t we try to be friends?”
Why did she want that so bad? If it was all or nothing with him, then she couldn’t stay. She’d be leaving. So why couldn’t she just let this thing fade into nothing?
“Go away, Alice.” He whispered and the words hurt her more than she’d thought they would. She winced. “Go back to your room. To the garden. I don’t care.” He turned his back on her. “Just go away.”
He didn’t want her. She closed her eyes, feeling disturbingly close to tears. He was a mess, a red hot mess. Too much baggage, too much trouble. He was not the man she remembered, maybe he never was, maybe she’d seen him through rose colored glasses, turning him into something he could never live up to. “I don’t know how to get back.” Her calm voice betrayed nothing of her quiet despair.
An outline of a door shimmered before her.
He leaned against the mantel, fingers running over the same spot as before. “It will take you anywhere you wish to go.”
He wanted nothing. He didn’t turn, didn’t move, not when he she walked toward the door, not even when she turned the knob. She peeked around the corner, hoping he’d turn around; tell her he didn’t mean it. Hoping that the Hatter who’d kissed her senseless, would return.
He didn’t move.
She wanted to laugh, not because it was funny, but because she was bleeding and if she didn’t laugh, she’d cry. Alice opened the door and walked away.
––––––––
“Why are you here?” The high-pitched voice pierced Alice’s skull.
Alice glared at Danika, hating the fairy in that moment. Hating her because she’d been happy, she’d had her dreams and hopes and coming here had dashed them all and made them seem much less exciting and wonderful. “Because he doesn’t want me.” She shifted on the bed, pulling her knees further against her chest. “I wanted to go back home. The stupid door was supposed to take me anywhere I wanted.” She looked at her feet. “I wanted to go home,” she said again in a reed thin whisper.
Four hours later, alternating between anger, woe-is-me, and a horrible need to cry, she’d finally come to the realization... the Hatter she’d known (or thought she’d known) had been a figment of a child’s overactive imagination. He’d never existed. Her crazy, kooky, Prince Charming did not exist.
He was just a shell, too damaged to love anything.
“The door cannot return you until the three days are up— ‘tis the way of it in Fairy. Your time is not yet done, Alice. You must go back to him.”
“Why?” she snapped, angry again. “Why did you freaking bring me here? He doesn’t want me,” she laughed, a thread of hysteria lacing her words. “He’s damaged goods, Danika. There’s nothing cracking that shell.”
“No, no,” Danika shook her head. “Not so. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”
Alice jerked to her knees, crawling forward on the bed, backing the little fairy into the wall.
“The same way he looked at all the others I’m sure. I’m just another Alice, another loser. Just like my great-grandmother.”
Danika dropped to the bed, her tiny wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s. “You don’t believe that. And neither do I. You surprise him, dearie. You understand him. None of the others did, or could.”
Alice stopped and sat back on her butt, wrapping a strand of hair around her finger, tugging on it like she used to when she was younger. “I want to free him, Danika. I do.” And she did. Even though he made her angry and want to cuss and do things her mother would blush to know about, she still wanted to help him. Save him. “But it’s impossible. He’s too wounded, too fragile. Every little thing I say or do seems to piss him off. I can’t do this. He doesn’t want me. He sees her when he sees me, I can’t win.” The last came out a petulant whine.
Danika hovered in front of her, splaying her tiny hand on Alice’s chest. Heat poured through Alice like molten lava and her heart felt like it swelled, growing to twice its size.
“But don’t you see? The land has already begun responding to you.”
She shook her head. “What does that even mean? How can I make this place fall in love with me?”
“By making him fall in love with you.”
“But he loved my grandmother.”
“No,” Danika was adamant, blondish gray curls bounced attractively around her head. “What he felt was pretense. Lies. Lust masked as love. Had any of the other Alices encouraged him, his love would have turned to hate and that is why in part, he despises them now. It wasn’t real. In fact, I believe deep down he knew that. That’s why he never laid with them. Not one. In fact, I doubt he touched many of them.”
“Then neither is this.” But then Alice remembered his caresses, his kiss. Her heart thumped. He’d touched her.
“No, dear, you’re wrong. I know you’re his equal. The mate I’ve searched for all these years. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”
“Why do you think it’s me?” And why was her freaking heart pounding so hard? It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t. Right? She shook her head, trying to stop the weird thought that said it was totally possible. Totally do-able.
“Because you’ve loved him all your life. He’s been real for you all along, Alice. You have to make him see that. He must know the truth. Make him see you. Do whatever it takes—but make him see you. If you can make him see you, the land will accept you as part of itself. The curse will be broken, Alice.” Her blue eyes sparkled, black lashes quivering with gathering moisture.
Alice closed her eyes. “I can’t stay, Danika.” Though it was a ripping wound to say it. But she couldn’t abandon her life, her family. Not for a man she barely knew who didn’t want her anyway.
The smile turned into a frown. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, wee Alice.” Danika patted her hand. “Go find him, girl. Do not listen to the mad ramblings of a broken man. He means none of what he says and only half of what he doesn’t. You’ve got but two days, not even.” She glanced out the darkened window.
“That literally made no sense.”
Danika grinned, the twinkle back. “Aye, well, I guess he’s rubbed off on me.”
Stupid hope stirred like a lazy cat waking up, but Alice didn’t need hope. She needed to go home, back to the real world, and away from the pervasive temptation of a man who was no good for anybody.
“Do not abandon him now, there’s more to you than this.” Danika’s words echoed as she began to fade. When she was gone, the same door Alice had stepped through earlier reappeared.
It was her choice. She couldn’t look away from the door. The knowledge that he was on the other side of it was an incessant hammering thought. She bit her tongue. It was her choice.
No! She wouldn’t go to him.
She just couldn’t.
Her foot twitched.
***
Rain poured around Hatter. The thunderous boom of the darkened sky made him feel not so alone. He sat in his favorite recliner, in the center of a wildflower studded field. Wind howled, long saw grass swayed violently back and forth, cutting grooves into his bare hands, but he barely felt the pain.
Rain, like needle pricks, slapped at his face, drove hair into his eyes. He didn’t care, didn’t bother to move or turn. He welcomed the rain, welcomed the deluge, hoping it would somehow erase the torment gnawing at his guts. Because she was here, in his world, and he wanted nothing more than to be where she was. Bathe in the beauty of a simple smile, touch her soft flesh and inhale the sensual scent of her body.
He’d kept his place normal. For her. Seeing how she’d panicked when she’d walked through the twists and turns of his home. She was a mortal. Human. A being incapable of comprehending and accepting the dichotomous nature of Wonderland where up wasn’t always up, and down could sometimes lead nowhere.
So he’d muted it, kept it pretty. Banal. A white bird tumbled over and over, unable to catch its bearings in the tempest. It hurtled toward him, stick legs poking up in odd angles.
He snatched it just as it blew overhead.
What was this bird? He frowned. He should never have muted the magic. It was unnatural. And she wouldn’t stay. She should see it for what it really was and who cared if he scared her off? She’d leave and never come back. Just like the rest. All of them so fickle, foolish.
He’d sworn no more. Not after she’d left. The one he’d felt certain would be his Alice. But she’d been wicked, wanting nothing of him or what he’d offered.
The bird struggled in his grip, warmth flooded his palm, and suddenly the creature began to morph. Become what it really was. Its beak elongated, broadened at the tip.
So similar were the two Alices.
Its body thickened, turned a dusty shade of rose. Lightning struck right in front of him, but he didn’t jump. The bird flapped broad wings, the silver handle of its spoonbill tinkling with music as rain plopped harder and faster upon it.
Ozone swirled around him. He closed his eyes. But not all the same. This Alice was soft and sweet. She told him things. Wonderful, crazy things. Hunger for her, for his woman, clawed at his gut. He wanted to take her, claim her and make her forget any petty desires she’d ever had for returning to her world.
His fingers clenched and the bird grunted, clawed feet scrabbling to jump from his lap. But he held tight, squeezing harder.
Because the moment she returned to Earth she’d never come back, if she left, she’d stay gone. Alice would forget Wonderland. She would forget him.
The bird thrashed now, talons shredding his pant leg until he felt the heat of it grazing flesh.
“No Alice,” he muttered. Rain fell down his face like tears. Maybe they were tears. He swallowed hard, looking down at the bird. It labored for breath.
Ribs expanding, black eyes stared at him.
“Why do you look at me like that, bird?”
The spoonbill stopped struggling, but reproach burned in the depths of pain-filled eyes. He petted the wet feathers.
“Rose feathers. Tea roses. She rose in the moonlight. Moonlight shadows her face.” He closed his eyes again, his grip relaxing infinitesimally. “Face of a goddess. My Alice, my Alice.”
“Hatter?”
That voice. The singsong rhythm made him tremble, made his blood stir and his cock twitch.
Tiny hands caressed the lines of his jaw. His breath stuttered.
“Let the bird go, Hatter.”
Soft words, gentle, gentle. Like cashmere’s caress. Anything, anything for you, Alice.
He released the bird. And Hatter drowned in eyes that sparkled with shades of bitter beer. Her midnight hair was plastered to her face, the tiniest blue body-hugging dress he’d ever seen fitted to her like a second skin. Beautiful, so beautiful his Alice was.
“Why didn’t you leave me?” His voice cracked. “You always leave me. Always.”
She shook her head. “Hatter, I’m not them.” That luscious mouth turned down in a frown and he touched the corner, lifting it. Never wanting to see her sad, not her. Not his Alice.
She kissed the tip of his finger and it was fire. Flames. Scorching him, making him shake. Want, need. More than ever. More than before.
“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.
“When I was 13,” she began, wiggling closer, eliciting a thick groan from him. “I used to have headaches, every day.”
She stopped wiggling, looking beyond him. “Sometimes they were so bad, I couldn’t stop crying.” Her mouth thinned. “I didn’t think anything of it. My mom would give me some medicine and I’d feel better the next day. But then I started to forget things. Like my homework, and feeding our cats. Dumb stuff.” She shrugged and gave him a small smile.
He frowned, sensing this was more than just silly stuff.
“Then one morning I woke up, and I couldn’t remember my mother’s name. My sister’s. My dad. Nothing.”
He stilled her fidgeting fingers, rubbing his thumbs along her soft wrists.
“My dad was a doctor and knew something was wrong. So they took me to the hospital.” Her eyes were haunted, far away, glittering with unshed tears. “Do you know what brain cancer is, Hatter?”
His upside down crazy world paused. He couldn’t seem to catch a breath. He grabbed her head and tucked it against the crook of his neck, running his hand over the back of her thick hair.
“Are you sick, Alice?” His voice was gruff, feeling like he might choke on the question.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “No,” she said it so calmly that it was eerie. Was she sick? She shook her head emphatically and smiled. “No,” she said stronger, “not anymore.”
The greasy ball of fear in his gut eased up and he took a shaky breath.
Alice pulled away from him, looking at him, as if she were imprinting his face to memory. Her eyes traced the curves of his face before she spoke again.
“It was the size of a golf ball. They gave me a twenty percent chance of surviving the surgery.” She grinned, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was sad, laced with memories both bitter and hard to relive. “Only time I ever saw my mother cry. But I remember after the surgery, I was lying in bed and you came to me.”
He bit his lip.
“You grabbed my hand and whispered that I would be okay.”
A wiggle, a worm of a memory tried to work its way through the muddle of his thoughts. Ephemeral dreams, never to be remembered, such fleeting silly things.
White everywhere. The memory that had nagged at him from the moment he’d seen her began to form. Like riding through a dark tunnel and finally reaching the light... blurry images took shape and in an instant he recalled the dream with perfect clarity.
He’d been asleep, when he’d heard a voice. A sweet little voice, crying and pleading with him to please come. Please come, my Hatter.
The call had become desperate, incessant.
Please, Hatter, I need you...
And he’d had no choice but to follow. He couldn’t sleep, not with the tears, and the pleas, the way that voice had driven a spear through his heart. She’d needed him. Rarely did he visit the dreaming, rarely could he enter the consciousness of others, but he’d gone to her.
Such a little thing. Frail, skin so gray and chapped. A delicate china doll lying within a white cloud. She’d been so beautiful, silent. She’d opened her eyes and told him...
“Do you remember this at all? I’m such a freak sometimes. Of course, you don’t remember. It was only a dream.” Her laugh was self-deprecating, as if she were embarrassed to admit it. Like she expected him to mock her, so she mocked herself first.
“You asked me: was I real?”
Her face turned sharply toward his.
A black strand of hair slipped over her eye. He couldn’t help himself— he had to touch her. He wrapped the silken strand around his finger. She shivered.
His voice was raw, scratchy, but he forced himself to speak, knowing how desperately she needed to hear this. “When I said, I was, you said-”
“That you were so beautiful.” Her tender words were a benediction to his ears. “And you said?” she waited for him to continue, a challenge—he knew—to see if it’d impacted him the way it had her. If after all these years, he could remember.
He smiled; the words as clear to him now as they’d been that day in the strange cloud full of beeping sounds. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
“My favorite Confucius quote.” She turned her cheek into his palm. “You saved me that day, Hatter. I always felt like it was your magic that saved me. I fell in love with you that day.”
The ice around his heart thawed. She’d called him and he’d answered. His chest ached as the sky broke open with radiance, netting them in its golden wash.
“Oh, Hatter,” she half sobbed and then started kissing his face, his cheeks, his nose. Planting hot kisses and the fire that had simmered while she’d told her story, roared back.
Gods he wanted her, more than he’d ever that other Alice. He growled, grabbed the back of her head and slammed their lips together. No gentleness in this touch, he couldn’t. It’d been too long, and he’d been so empty. He needed this, her. Now.
“Yes, oh yes.” Her tiny moans drove him to distraction.
Her tongue flirted with the seam of his lips and she tasted of sunshine. And magic. Magic? His heart’s blood sang in his ears. She was the one. She had to be. He could barely think. All he knew was he had to have this woman. This human mortal who’d cried out for him.
The Mad Hatter.
She’d not been afraid.
She’d wanted his touch.
He traced the curve of her neck; his fingers framed the hollow of her throat, thumb resting against it, feeling the frenetic beat of her pulse. He groaned, twining his tongue with hers.
His body throbbed, ached. He pushed back on her shoulders, laying her down and she squealed. Alice glanced around. “Where are we?”
He’d not been aware he’d transported them until she’d asked it. Barely pausing, he whispered, “My room.” Then he was kissing her again, tasting the sweet saltiness of her neck, licking the dip behind her ear.
She moaned, wiggled on him and blood pooled heady and thick in his cock. “I want you,” he groaned.
Alice fumbled with dress. She yanked, tugged, and then finally threw her hands out to the sides. “Just rip it.”
Grinning, he tore it and immediately was entranced by the sight of the red lace bra covering perfectly rounded breasts. His hand shook. “You are beautiful.”
Her lashes fluttered. “Touch me.”
He didn’t just want to touch her. He wanted to taste her. Lowering his head, he kissed the swell of each breast; his hands massaged their prizes before tugging the bra down. She had dark brown nipples, so pointed, so lovely.
He took one in his mouth, rolled it between his teeth, his tongue swirling over the tip. Her moan bounced around the room, her fingers desperate, yanking at the back of his head, tugging his hair. Sharp nails dug into his scalp, drawing welts and he growled. Pain, and so much pleasure.
“I want to touch you, Hatter,” she pleaded. All he could do was mumble. She pulled at his still wet shirt. It stuck, refusing to slide up.
In her frustration, she ground her center on his blood-engorged cock. “Dammit it all to hell,” he growled, ripping the shirt off, unbuttoning his pants. He needed her hands on him now, needed her to end his agony.
She pushed his hands away and started shoving his pants down, using her feet to push down further when her hands could no longer reach. He lifted up on the tips of his shoes.
Never had he been this reckless, this wild to slake his lust. His kisses left a moist trail from her breasts to her navel. She bucked and lifted up with a soft ah.
“Too many bloody clothes,” he snarled and then chuckled when their clothes disappeared. In his rush to have her, he’d forgotten a few simple words could have made the process much easier.
Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief. “Well, that was easy.”
He kissed her, turning her laugh into a throaty growl. She wrapped her legs around his waist; the movement brought him against the heady wetness between her thighs. He clenched his teeth, trying to hang on, trying to make it special for her. Not wanting to rush this, but knowing he was already so close.
Hatter crawled down her fevered body. For a moment, they stared at each other, the moment transcending more than carnality, more than a meeting of lust.
Two lost and broken souls meeting, discovering that in each other they’d found the missing half. Fall and spring, ying and yang. He breathed, she breathed. Both afraid to speak, to ruin the perfection of a moment suspended in time.
But time was fleeting and they both knew it.
He broke eye contact first. He didn’t want to get lost that way, couldn’t afford to. He licked his lips and froze when his gaze landed on the springy black mass of curls at the juncture of her thighs.
“Alice.” Her name, a whisper, a prayer—fell from his lips in a trembling voice.
Unabashed, she spread her legs, exposing her swollen pink pearl. His limbs felt too heavy, the air too thick. It was hard to breath, to move. All he wanted to do was lie down and pet her, taste her.
“Hatter, please.”
It was his undoing. He lowered his head, inhaled, taking the heady aroma deep into his lungs.
“Please,” she whispered again.
The moment his mouth touched her clit, she hissed, rocked back on her heels and squeezed her thighs around his face with a punishing grip.
He drew his tongue long and slow down her slit. She tasted of tart raspberries. Delicious. Hatter teased, running his tongue back and forth until she gleamed wet with her dew and his tongue. When he heard her murmuring incoherently, he took her clit into his mouth and sucked hard.
“Oh my gosh,” she cried, “yes. Oh my gosh, oh my Hatter, my crazy Hatter.”
Her words enflamed him, drove him insane. He sucked harder, swirling the bit of flesh around his tongue. Her fingers scratched him everywhere, raising the fine hairs on his body. Using his bristly jaw, he rubbed against her while he continued his onslaught.
Then she was clenching again, her entire body rocking on his face for several intense seconds before she went limp.
“Oh,” she laughed, and bit her finger. “That was, oh wow...” Her laid his chin on her belly, still tasting her on his tongue and watched as her dusky cheeks burned crimson.
Skin glowing, eyes sparkling, black hair fanned out behind her like blades of shadow... she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. He would always remember her, just like this.
She held her arms out to him. “Come here.”
He slipped into her arms, warmth flooded his entire body. He still burned for her, but beneath that drive, was a confusing ebb and flow he’d never felt before. Ice and fire.
Wanting to cry, not knowing why. Maybe he was mad, maybe the rumors were true.
She kissed him, wrapped her legs around him again and slid that hot heat along the thick, painful length of his cock.
“It’s your turn, my love,” she whispered, kissing the crook of his neck, setting his blood on fire.
He adjusted his hips and moaned as he finally slid home. Her sheath was like a tight warm fist as he pumped. Sweat dripped from his brow.
He started whispering, lost in his head, in the feel of her body pressed to his. He didn’t know what he was saying, but he couldn’t stop the words.
So good. So damn good.
Gnashing his teeth, his body tightened and tingled as the pressure built.
“Love it,” she kept whispering over and over.
With one last surge, he fell over the cliff. Fractured into a thousand pieces of nothing and sank into the peaceful oblivion of the little death.
It took a moment to come back and when he did he knew he’d never be the same. She’d slipped under the cracks, found the chink in his armor and wiggled her way in. He’d never be able to excise her and he never wanted to.
He hugged her to him, knowing he’d found his Alice. After all these years, he’d found her.
“Hatter.” She looked at him, a small frown marring her brows. “You’re crying?”
How could he tell her? How could he explain that it wasn’t him who’d saved her? She’d saved him? His heart was so full it hurt. He buried his nose in her hair, she smelled like caramel. Gods, he loved that smell.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Hatter.” She touched his cheek. “I’m... I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. Ever. It was perfect.”
“It was perfect, wasn’t it?” He heard her smile.
Swallowing hard, he looked at her.
“Hatter.” She patted the bed. “Can I sleep here tonight? In your arms?”
He should say no. Gods, he was a masochist. He should guard what fragile bits of it were left, she would leave him. They always did. He closed his eyes, but opened his arms. “Yes.”
They lay, neither one speaking, hanging on, as if clinging could stop the hands of time.
––––––––
Alice stretched in the morning light. Her arms high above her head, she woke from the best night’s sleep she’d had, ever.
“Good morning,” he said in the whiskey-roughened voice that made her shiver and her stomach tingle.
“Back ‘atcha.”
He touched her cheek. She’d slept, but a part of her had been aware of his light caresses throughout the night. Her lover. Her Mad Hatter. Her stomach fluttered... just thinking it was unreal. Who got this lucky? Never her, never geeky little Alice Hu.
And yet here she was. In his bed. With his big, naked body exposed for her to look her fill. He sat next to her, one knee bent, his cock at half-mast and wearing an expression of wonderment. She licked her lips.
“I’m hungry.” She bit her lip.
He frowned. So cute when he did that, he was so clueless. He was looking around; she could almost see the wheels in his head turning, wondering what she would like.
She laughed and sat up, then wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled it. He still smelled of rain, but also with a rich earthy musk that made her body burn.
“I’m very hungry,” she murmured licking the vein at his neck.
“Oh.” A flash of light manifested above his head and she knew he finally understood. He wrapped big arms around her and she trembled. “Oh,” he said again, that sexy voice of his dipping to a lower octave, “well, I’m starving.”
Last night he’d given her the best orgasm of her life. It was only fair she returned the favor. Alice straddled him, pushed him down and watched as the cat-ate-the-canary grin stole across his face. He crossed his arms behind his back.
“I’m at your disposal.”
She bit her lip. “Mmm... what a tempting offer.” She touched the tip of her finger to the center of his chest, feeling him twitch against her thigh.
So large and lovely and perfect. She wanted him in her again. But first...
“Maybe I should kiss you here.” She touched one nipple and it puckered into a hard bud. The muscles of his stomach strained.
“That would be nice,” he agreed.
“Or maybe,” she batted her lashes and continued her fingertip exploration, circling his navel, “I should kiss you here.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Or,” she grabbed him, giving him a gentle squeeze, “maybe here.”
His eyes squeezed shut as his head jerked. “Oh gods, Alice. Yes, please, yes.”
Her mouth watered and she scooted back on her heels, unable to wait another second. She brought him to her mouth, and brushed her tongue against the opening. He jerked so hard, he nearly pulled out of her grasp. Then his hand was framing the back of her head, guiding her to take his full length.
She took him in with a greedy gulp. His hips twitched and she knew he wanted to shove in, but he was being patient. Gentle.
She loved him. She knew that now. She always had, there’d never been a question of that. Alice wanted to show him just how much.
Humming, she took him in to the hilt, loving the feel of his silken skin against her tongue. He started murmuring again and her heart almost exploded from her chest.
“I love you, Alice. Oh gods, Alice, only you. It’s only been you. Never again. No more. Just you. You’re mine. Always, always.”
He was senseless in his ramblings, and she wondered if he even knew what he was saying. She toyed with him, pretending he meant each and every word. Pretending she was that precious to him, that loved and cherished by him.
His legs stiffened. “I’m coming, my love. You might want to pull out.” His words were thick, slurred with lust.
She shook her head, wanting everything he had to give. He shot in her mouth with a loud roar and it was sweet and creamy. She swallowed it with a happy little grin and wiped the back of her mouth with her hand.
He sat up, a look of utter astonishment on his face. “Alice,” he grabbed her, pulled her tight to him, “I...I...” She never heard what he meant to say, he kissed her.
They stayed in bed for hours, eating, playing, making love. Discovering each other and themselves.
Hours later, sated (for now), they finally ventured from the bed. Hatter was dressed in his outlandish clothes again and her heart beamed with pride.
“You know,” she said, “you’re all sorts of perfect.”
He smiled, but she saw pleasure in his eyes. “I want to show you something. Will you come?”
She nodded. “I’ll go anywhere with you.” Her hand slipped into his and they were once again walking through the weird door that lead nowhere and everywhere. Suddenly it dawned on her the door took them anywhere. When she’d first gotten here, had she really needed to travel through so many crazy twists and turns? Probably not. She smiled, her crazy silly Hatter. He’d probably been trying to make her run off, scare her. Alice squeezed his fingers. But she wasn’t the giving up type, never had been.
When he pulled her through, she looked around, expecting something grandiose, quirky... what she got was a dusty old workshop full of wood working tools and machines.
His smile was radiant. “This is my refuge.”
He was looking around and she was looking at him. So different from the moody Hatter she’d first met, now he was bouncing on his feet, gripping her hand like a lifeline while he waited for her to say something.
There were several unfinished pieces around. Something that looked like shelves sat on a far bench and closest to her, a large chunk of driftwood with a scene etched into its side. She squinted.
The scene was a depiction of trees and nature, but within the copse of trees were rounded shapes. She smiled, when she finally recognized it.
“That’s a carnival.” She looked at him. “Like the one on your wall the other night.”
His knuckled her cheeks, brushed against the corner of her lips. She kissed him and his laugh was relaxed, easy.
Gone was the madness, the mayhem of irony, and the gloom of depression. “As a little boy, my mother used to take me to the fair.” His eyes shone. “I loved the rides, but most especially the giant wheel with lights. Round and round it went.” He shook his head. “I could have ridden it all night.”
She grabbed his hand, turning it over, finally noticing the thick calluses on his palm. She brushed her fingers over it, and then brought it to her mouth and kissed each one. Such strong hands, loving hands. A true artist, he’d touched every inch of her with these hands.
She didn’t want to leave. Ignoring the heat starting to gather behind her eyes, she asked, “Why don’t we?”
He took her chin, lifting her eyes to his. “Alice?”
She shook her head and sniffed. “Why don’t we ride all night, Hatter? Eat cotton candy until we’re sick and can’t think anymore?”
He said nothing for a moment, and she knew he sensed her sadness, it was in the way his mouth thinned, his fingers clenched, but he nodded instead. “Yes. Let’s ride, Alice.”
They stepped outside the workshop and, as Alice knew there would be, a Ferris wheel sat tall and stately, just waiting for them.
He led her to a basket and when they sat, the ride started of its own accord. Lively carnival music filled the woods and it was so perfect. So wonderful she wanted to cry.
Her heart was breaking.
This wasn’t fair.
He hugged her, pulling her to his side. The air was sweet with the scents of night.
“Alice,” his voice shook, “I want you to stay.”
She bit her lip and turned her face into his side. Wonderland had not accepted her. Of that she was positive, there’d been no music, no land shaking—her stomach churned—it’d rejected her too.
Then a thought came and she grabbed the lapel of his multi-colored jacket. “Come with me, Hatter. Come back.” He blinked, his eyes went hooded and she didn’t want him to say no. “Not forever,” she rushed on, “just long enough for me to get my life in order. Then we can go anywhere. Anywhere you want. We can be together. I’ll stay here permanently if that’s what you want.”
Already she imagined introducing her crazy boyfriend to her parents, to Tabby, and fought a snicker at the thought. Her conservative parents would flip. Tabby on the other hand would probably love him.
“No.”
She jerked. “What?” Alice drew a blank on her thoughts. “No?”
“No.” His jaw clenched and her stomach dropped like the ride she was on. He couldn’t say no. Hadn’t he just said that he wished she could stay?
“But it’s perfect.” She should stop talking, stop embarrassing herself further, but she had to make him see.
His nostrils flared and he looked away. “I wish...” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Gods,” he moaned, “so many things. So many things, Alice. Please,” and she heard the same desperation in his plea as had been hers, “please stay with me. Don’t go back.”
A lump wedged in her throat. “Hatter, you know I can’t. Not if Wonderland rejects me. Danika told me the ground would rock and the air would sing.” She had no way of knowing if she’d broken it or not, but it didn’t feel like anything monumental had changed. There’d been no songs, no quakes. Which meant another Alice would come.
It was a bleeding wound type of thought.
He shook his head. “It’s over. I don’t care. Let them come, let a million more come. I won’t have them, any of them.” He touched her chin, forcing her to look up at him.
“I just want you, Alice Hu. You. You perfect china doll in the white clouds with that beautiful widow’s peak,” he touched her hair, “and your dainty feet, and bow-shaped lips that utter poetry and make me feel... alive.”
Tears started dripping then.
“I,” she sobbed hard, the tears obscuring his face, “Hatter, what are you doing? You know I can’t. I haven’t been-”
“Dammit!” he snarled. “Always no. Always, always no.”
She shook her head. Couldn’t he see she had nothing to do with this? She couldn’t control this, why couldn’t he understand that? Why was he making it so difficult on her? “Hatter, come. With me. Please.” Her words came between stuttered sobs.
“I can’t.” Two simple words, but they rang with the finality of a death knell.
He pulled his arm out from behind her and Alice couldn’t believe it. Not after last night, this morning, all the heated whispers of love and adoration. He felt something. She knew it. “We still have time. Please don’t do this yet. Please don’t turn away from me. I have responsibilities, but I love you, Hatter. It’s always been you. Please.”
He closed his eyes, the ride stopped and he lifted the gate. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Alice. I will not go and you cannot stay.”
“Stop telling me what I mean,” she snarled, “I’m so sick of you thinking you know me. Thinking you know at all how I feel.”
He didn’t react, but simply said, “love opens the gates, Alice.” His eyes were distant and she knew the truth. It was over.
He stood up and started to walk away, then stopped and came back. She thought maybe he’d changed his mind, her heart leapt and she wiped at the tears running freely down her cheeks. She didn’t know why Wonderland still rejected her, but it wasn’t for lack of love. She burned with it.
He took her hair, slipped it through his fingers and shuddered. “I...” he swallowed and dropped his hand.
Desperate for his touch, unwilling to accept this, she leaned in. It couldn’t be over.
“Goodbye, Alice girl.” Then he turned, head held high, and walked off.
She stood numb, watching the scene unfold with cold detachment; her brain unable to accept the reality of the moment.
What had just happened?
He’d left her.
Why?
She hugged her arms to her body. Her hero. The man who’d saved her life, he’d walked off, never looking back. No kiss. No nothing.
Why couldn’t he have come home with her? She sucked in a breath, body shaking. She’d said she would say good-bye and go anywhere. She’d be happy, so long as they were together, it didn’t matter where. Here. Earth. Anywhere.
The tears came harder, fatter, and hotter. She could hardly breathe out of her nose. Blue light shimmered in front of her and then she stood face to face with the door.
Alice looked around. The Ferris wheel was gone; the woodshop was gone. She stood in the middle of an empty field.
Heart miserable, she reached out and took hold of the knob. Her foot stood poised above the threshold as the memory of his words to her in the hospital room crowded her mind.
“Everything has beauty,” she said, “but not everyone sees it.” Her stomach hurt, her eyes burned. “I saw you, Hatter.” Her words whispered through the night. “I saw you.”
She walked away.
***
Hatter stood behind the shadow of a tree and watched her walk away; taking the last shreds of his heart with her. She’d lied. Just like the others. Told him she loved him, but she hadn’t. Because Wonderland would have said yes. She’d been perfect. So perfect, his tiny Alice with her piercing eyes and wicked mouth. He trembled, remembering her touch, her tongue.
“I saw you too, Alice.” His words carried like a whisper on the breeze. Wonderland shuddered, the wind sang with a choir of a thousand bells and the ground swayed.
Hatter gripped the tree and horror blanketed his mind. Wonderland said yes, not because of her words, but because of his.
––––––––
Alice was gone and his heart bled crimson. Hatter grabbed his temples. She’d not lied when she’d said she loved him. Wonderland accepted her, wanted her. And she’d left them both.
Because of him. He’d not told her the truth, why he couldn’t go with her. Why he could never leave. She’d thought he’d rejected her. He should have told her the truth.
“Damn me,” he pounded his fist on his chair. The sky outside the window rolled with thunder, black clouds bloated with rain drenched the lands. She’d left and it was all his fault.
Frogs dropped from the sky by the thousands, their dying croaks lingering in his ear like a macabre lullaby.
All his fault.
Dueling rams knocked horns, their strikes raged with the sound of thunder. His house shook, but Hatter wouldn’t move. He’d stay and watch as Wonderland ripped herself apart.
He swallowed the bile in his throat.
He should never have kissed her. Touched those soft pink lips, tasted the dew between her thighs. Heat spiraled down his legs, made him weak in the knees and stirred his blood. Gods she’d smelled so good.
Like salt and caramel. His mouth watered, wishing he could taste it again, sink into the mindless oblivion of her beauty.
He was the Mad Hatter; he should have known he could never have a happy ending. He’d never allow it.
“Insane. Stupid. Insane.” He muttered. “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, and the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted nevermore...”
“Hatter.” A golden ball of light materialized before him, the humming flit of wings became an irritating buzz. He swatted at her.
“Damn you,” he snarled, eyeing Danika. “Why did you bring her?”
Her blue eyes grew wide and sparkled with tears. “Oh, Hatter.” She grabbed her chest. “What can I do? I cannot bring another Alice, she’s been found and Wonderland...”
Hatter pounded his fist. Black birds dropped like cannon against his roof, landing in front of his window with unblinking eyes. “I don’t want another! I want her. I want my Alice. My AlicemyAlicemyAlice.”
He grabbed his head, it hurt. It hurt to think of her, he closed his eyes and she was there, but when he opened them she was gone. Gone, gone, gone, and he was lost.
Come to me my, Hatter. The words tore through his skull. He dropped to his knees, heart thundering. “Alice!” he screamed. Come to me my, love. Come to me,tometometome...
“Alice!” Hatter cried. He heard her— she called to him. Wanted him. Needed him, just like before. But there was only blackness, no white clouds, blackness and beeping and his heart tore into a thousand fragments of fear because he tasted her sickness, the bitter nip of cancer spread inside and through his head. “Alice?” he screamed again, but the faint voice did not return.
“I cannot go to her. I cannot find her. Lost to me. Should have told her. Should have said why... She’ll never know...” He rocked, grabbing his chest and moaning loud. Why had he sent her away? Stupid Hatter. Stupid. A dark void swirled in his vision; thoughts crowded his brain sucking him down into a bog of nonsense. He couldn’t go to her. Couldn’t find her.
Danika shook him. “Look at me, Hatter. Tell her what?”
He shook his head. Thoughts scattering, rolling, mucking him up. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he squeezed the last lucid memory from his mind. “Love her. Alice is dying. My Alice. My Alice. Get her, Danika. Please...”
Then the voices crowded him, a million talk talking sounds and he stopped fighting. Too hard to remember, too easy to forget.
“Prophet! said I, ‘thing of evil!’ – prophet still, if bird or devil! – Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore...” Hatter never tore his eyes from the storm, his nails bled from scratching at the wood of his armrest as the madness of his mind consumed him.
––––––––
All Alice wanted was her room and her bed. She wanted to lay down and never move, never have to remember or think about the man who’d stolen her heart. Again. She almost crawled up the last flight of stairs, shaking the knob with weary hands. It was locked.
She frowned and patted her body. She was wearing the cami and shorts she’d worn the first night. No purse, which meant no keys and no cell phone. And it was late.
She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, her face all puffy from crying. Tabby had told her once she was an ugly crier. It was true. Her nose always got cherry red at the tip and her eyes would turn puffy and purple.
Exhausted, annoyed, she kicked the door and then headed back down. She’d walk to the shop. Maybe Tabby was still there.
She grabbed her head. It was throbbing again. Somehow, and she couldn’t even remember doing it, she walked the three blocks to her storefront. Waikiki was dark, with few stragglers around. It had to be well past midnight, but things didn’t slow down until at least two or three in the morning.
“Dammit!” She sobbed, the tears started back up again. Last thing she wanted was to be locked out all night. She wanted to sleep, to forget him, to forget that. To forget it all.
In frustration, she yanked on the door and yelped when it gave way, nearly causing her to fall down as she stumbled through.
“Alice!” Tabby’s cry was unmistakable and filled with panic.
“Tabby?” she looked around the dark room, and finally saw a small movement slip away from shadow.
Then arms were crushing her and she was crying loud. “I knew it, I knew you’d come back here. Alice, where the hell have you been?”
Tabby clung to her so hard she could barely breathe. Wanting to kick herself all sorts of stupid, only just realizing she’d been gone three days. They’d all probably been sick with worry.
“I...” she pulled a blank, not knowing what to say, who would believe this story? She wouldn’t believe this story if she hadn’t lived it. “I’m fine,” she laughed, trying to play it off and disentangled Tabby’s arms from around her neck.
Tabby growled. She walked to the wall, flipped on the light switch and pointed at her. “How dare you leave like that? How dare you.” Her brown eyes were thin slits and Alice had never seen Tabby so angry. Vibrating with it. She looked like hell too.
Her eyes were puffy and dark, like she hadn’t slept in months.
“Do you know how hard it’s been running this place without you? Wondering if you were dead or alive? Your mom has been crazy with grief.”
She laughed. “Jeez, Tabs, I’ve only been gone three days. I’m sorry but...”
Her eyes widened. “Three days! Try three months, you asshole! Three months!”
“Shut up. Don’t be stupid.” She laughed, but Tabby didn’t crack a smile. In fact, she didn’t even blink. She walked up to Alice, grabbed her shoulders and shook. Panic so thick on her, Alice felt it choking the breath from her lungs like smoke from a fire. “Tabs?”
Her lips wobbled and Alice could see she had a hard time swallowing. “Three months, Alice.”
Knees suddenly gave out on her, thankfully Tabby anticipated that reaction, and pulled a chair out just in time. She plopped onto it. Grabbing her head. It was splitting and each time she swallowed she tasted metal on her tongue.
Alice shook.
Tabby dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around her waist and held her tight. Hot tears soaked the front of her shirt. But Alice was cold. Calm. She knew.
The pain in her head, the visions. She closed her eyes. The loss of time.
“It’s back, isn’t it, Tabby?”
“Oh Alice, Alice,” she repeated her name like a litany. “Best doctors. Best care. We’ll catch it in time.”
Empty words. Three months. That was a long time. The longest blackout ever. They both knew. The tumor was back.
She should be crying. But there was nothing there now. She was empty. Devoid. And a part of her had suspected, when she’d told him her story. It was back. She closed her eyes, remembering dark brown eyes that made her want to melt at his feet. Made her want to forget this world.
Something wet slid from her nose and when she brushed the back of her hand against it a red streak smeared her hand and the strong scent of blood filled her head.
Had it only been a dream?
***
The doctors had done all they could. But the tumor was too large, too deep, and two weeks later she battled for life. Wonderland was a fairy tale that no longer existed for her in the new reality of doctors and cancer. In a matter of days she’d become an emaciated skeleton. Doctors had been shocked at her rapid decline. Even she’d been amazed, as if the three months she’d been missing and healthy suddenly spun time forward the moment she’d stepped foot back on Earth. She was skin and bones, with nothing but a few stray hairs on her head. She looked dead already.
She’d had a dream last night, one where she’d called his name and he’d screamed hers in return. It’d been wonderful, but too soon she’d woken up and now the pleasure was pain.
Tabby grabbed her hand. “This room’s so much nicer than the last one,” she said with a weak grin. “Yellow too,” she pointed to the walls, “your favorite color. Yup,” she nodded, “I like this one.”
“It’s okay, Tabs.” Her voice was weak. She was so tired, so very tired. It was time and she was ready. But first she had to let them know it was okay. “I’m dying. And it’s okay.”
Tabby’s beautiful face twisted up into an ugly mask and she pressed a white tissue to her face as the silent cry wracked her body. “I love you, Alice. You know that, right? Sisters?”
Alice smiled. “The best.”
Beany—a.k.a. Mr. H.P.D.—grabbed Tabby’s shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. Alice closed her eyes. Tabby would be okay—she’d found her man. They were going to marry next year. For a second it hurt, hurt so bad Alice’s jaw trembled. They’d have beautiful kids, a beautiful life.
Tabby wiped her nose with a tissue. She glanced at Beany then back down at Alice. “You should know we’ve renamed the Shoppe. It’s now going to be called Alice and Hatter’s Cupcakery and Tea Shoppe.”
Tears lodged in her throat. She wouldn’t cry. It would kill Tabby to think she didn’t love it. She did, it was a comfort to know in a small way she’d always be a part of the place that’d brought her so much joy.
Alice opened her mouth to say thanks when a stab of pain shot down her spine and broke her out in a clammy sweat. She hissed.
“Does it hurt, sweetie?” Her mother’s voice was soft as she gently pushed Tabby aside to grab Alice’s hand. She nodded, fighting the nausea, the need to puke food she’d not eaten in days. Her mother’s hands were warm. Loving.
The machine beeped as her mother increased her dose of pain medicine. It wasn’t enough, never enough to fully blunt it. She trembled when the worst of it passed, opening weary eyes.
Her mother’s face, lined with wrinkles, so like her own smiled down at her. She closed her eyes. Doctors said it would be any day now. They kept saying that. Kept whispering, thinking she couldn’t hear, but she heard.
A part of her wanted to go now. But something kept her hanging on. More than the dreams of him, more than the memory still as clear as a picture in her mind, she had to wait, and so she did, astonishing her doctors, family, and friends. But soon she wouldn’t be able to hang on.
Alice took a rattling breath. The cancer metastasized on a daily basis. It was in her lungs, blood, spleen, kidneys, you name it... it was there. At first doctors had suggested surgery, but she knew it was like trying to put a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed. Useless. Eventually, the doctors had decided to “control the pain.” She’d known what that meant: it was over. No more hope.
“Alice,” her mother rubbed her fingers over Alice’s bald brows. “Tutu is here. She wants to speak with you.”
Since returning Alice had refused to meet with her great-grandmother. Not because she was still angry, but because seeing her would make her remember him.
“Please talk with her,” her mother pleaded, “She’s old and travels down here every day only for you to say no.”
Alice didn’t say anything, but gave a gentle nod. Her mother gave a swift smile, glanced over her shoulder and nodded.
“Love you, Alice,” Tabby whispered, leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek as Alice’s father wheeled her great grandmother into the room.
Her frail grandmother—covered in wrinkles and liver spots—looked the epitome of health compared to her. Filmy brown eyes studied her. Tutu let out a heavy sigh.
Alice looked up at the ceiling, unable to meet Tutu’s scrutiny.
“The fairy-” Tutu began.
Alice sucked in a breath.
“She came to you.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
Alice’s heart bled anew, she bit her bottom lip as the tears she’d refused to cry in front of Tabby finally came. She nodded.
Tutu was near blind, but even so, Alice felt that heavy gaze to the depths of her soul. “Go back. Call her to you and go back, Kuuipo. Wonderland will heal you. Will save you.”
Alice let the tears fall, uncaring who saw them. “I... I can’t. Wonderland said no.” She sucked in a hard breath, trying in vain to fill lungs that refused to fully inflate.
Tutu patted her hand, her skin was so soft. “They did this to you. They owe you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Hatter didn’t do this. Neither did Danika. My. Time.” She huffed, no energy left in her body to feel anger, spite, or jealousy toward the woman who’d ruined Hatter for so long.
Tutu’s lips pressed into a thin slash and for a moment Alice saw the stubborn jaw, the legendary angry glint in her eyes.
“I... I loved him. Won’t go back.” She sucked air, needing to get this out, working harder than she’d worked in days, but knowing she had to tell someone the truth. “Not for healing. Never want him to think it wasn’t for... love.”
It was out, and maybe that’s what she’d been holding out for, because now Alice was tired- dead tired, ready to let go.
“Love him... so much.” The last words ended on a ragged whisper.
***
Danika had to find her. Alice had to know the truth. Why Hatter hadn’t followed. How it’d been the Hatter and not her that’d needed to confess his love.
Her wings fluttered. Maybe there was still hope. Danika waved her wand with a jerk, transporting herself back to Earth. She would fix this.
The briny smell of ocean water greeted Danika as she stepped through dimensions. Palm trees swayed in the gentle breeze. People shuffled about and kids squealed running through Waikiki’s waves. Earth wasn’t all bad.
But when she walked past the bakery, she frowned. The lights were off and the store empty. It was only midday.
Danika knocked on the door. No one came. She wiggled the lock. It didn’t budge.
A friendly face poked out of the neighboring building. A petite Asian woman with kind brown eyes smiled at her. “Girl not here,” she said in a gentle lilt.
Shocked, she pointed. “But they just opened.”
The old woman nodded. “Yes. Very sad. Girl sick. Very bad sick. She go hospital. No long time left.” She shook her head; a tiny frown tipped her mouth.
Her heart clenched. “Which one?”
She scratched her head. “Queens. She no long left.” She tsked. “Good girl, good cake. Too bad.” With one final shake of her head, she walked back into her shop.
Finding Queen’s Center was easy—finding Alice’s room was not. She walked down hallway after hallway, asking if anyone knew of Alice Hu. Finally a kindly nurse pointed her to the front desk. But Danika wasn’t family and wasn’t allowed access.
She frowned, knowing there had to be a way. The very rude young man turned his back, and she smiled. Danika turned invisible, glanced at the computer screen and finally located Alice’s room. Room 5A, I.C.U.
The moment she walked through the halls and heard the quiet hush of death, she knew it was very, very bad.
Each room held a sad scene. People around a bed, machines beeping and whirring, sustaining a life that would end in days or weeks.
The sterile hallways made her want to run away. Her skin prickled with cold, the sounds of wheezing and sometimes... no sounds at all, it was almost too much. She stopped walking, clung to the wall and took a deep breath.
“Hatter needs her.” Steeling her resolve, she moved again. Three more rooms and then she saw her. She was alone.
Alice seemed dwarfed by the bed she lay on. The once vibrant honey hue of her skin was now ashen and gray. She looked like a skeleton; there wasn’t even any hair on her head, just thin wisps.
Her hands shook.
Clear, plastic tubes ran up her nose.
“Oh, Alice girl, I’m so, so sorry.”
Alice’s lashes fluttered. She opened her eyes, her breath coming short and choppy. “Danika? You’re here?”
She walked up to her, grabbed her hand, afraid to hurt her, afraid to let go. The vibrant beauty of before was gone, all that remained was a shell. Her eyes were bloodshot, wide and shining.
“I... Oh, dearie, I never knew.” Words spilled from Danika’s lips, mingled with the tears from her eyes.
Alice smiled, her lashes fluttered, as if the effort to hold her eyes open cost her everything. “It was nice. I was,” she breathed, a shallow sucking in of oxygen, “happy.”
“Who is she talking to?”
Danika turned at the sound of another voice. A woman—bearing an uncanny resemblance to Alice, but older—asked a man in a white coat. He put an arm around her shoulder.
“It’s part of the process. The drugs have dulled the pain.” His voice broke and he looked at Alice with love shining in his eyes.
Alice’s laugh was weak. Danika looked back at her. “They don’t see you. Think. I’m. Crazy.” Her lips trembled. “As a Hatter.”
The woman behind them sobbed. Heels clicked loudly on linoleum as she ran from the room.
“He misses you desperately,” Danika whispered.
She coughed, and then gasped. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. “Wonderland. No.”
Danika shook her head. “No, Alice. Wonderland said yes. It wasn’t you, see.” She rubbed her knuckle. “It was him. He had to declare himself, had to truly fall in love. He loves you, Alice.”
For a moment, Alice’s face crumpled, then she grew calm, unnaturally still. “All that we see... or seem is but a dream... within a dream.”
It was hard to listen to Alice speak, each word forced out between labored pants for breaths.
“Alice, look at me.” Danika patted her hand, forcing the girl to work through the lethargy and open her eyes. They glimmered with tears. She licked her lips. “You can still come back.”
Alice snorted. “Dying.”
“I can take you. Wonderland will heal you. You’ll never die. Never. You’ll be perfect and healthy, with your Hatter. Always.”
The tears started to fall, each one like a blade to Danika’s heart. Alice had to come back. Not just for Hatter’s sanity, but also because the thought of such a young life being extinguished was a tragedy Danika couldn’t endure.
“Didn’t want me. He wouldn’t come...” Alice coughed, the booming sound painful to Danika’s ears. She winced in sympathy, waiting for it to pass. After a minute Alice laid back down, her lips tinted blue.
The girl had minutes. A shadow of death hovered above her, reaching out its cold skeletal fingers, ready to claim her any moment now.
“Here? He wouldn’t come here, is that what you’re trying to tell me, Alice?”
Alice nodded weakly.
“Oh, Alice. He wants you beyond endurance. He’s locked himself up in his house, the land rages beyond his door. Wonderland is in chaos. Creatures die and kill each other. The violence of his mind has exploded upon the land.” She shuddered. “Alice, he couldn’t come. Do you hear me?”
The girl was unnaturally quiet. Danika patted her cheek and Alice stirred and mumbled.
“Listen to me.” Danika pried Alice’s eyes open, forcing Alice to see her. “He couldn’t come because, outside of Wonderland, he’s not immortal. He was like you. A human who stumbled in.” She rushed through the explanation, hoping the girl would hang on long enough to listen. “Time would catch up with him. Why do you think he’s surrounded by clocks? Each Wonderland day is a month here.”
Alice’s eyes widened, trying to focus. “A month?”
Danika nodded. “A month. He’s so old now time would catch up with him in seconds. He cannot exist beyond Wonderland.”
Alice’s nostrils flared, she was trying so hard to think it through. Danika could see her struggle; see her fight to hang on to reality. “Want me?”
“Yes.” Hope leaped into Danika’s throat. “The land accepts you. Wants you. So does he. Return to him, save him, save yourself. Oh Alice, come home with me.”
Alice frowned, her eyes looking out at the door. “How will... you. Take. Me?”
Danika touched the tip of her wand to Alice’s stomach. “With magic.”
Alice shook her head. “Body? Or...” she inhaled, “just soul?”
Danika’s eyes widened. “This is not heaven, child. I cannot divide your soul from your body. All of you. I would take all of you.”
Alice closed her eyes.
Danika’s heart stuttered as she waited for the girl to take a breath. She shook her hand. Not yet, please not yet.
Alice’s family would surely worry when they came back to find an empty bed, to always wonder. But it was the only way. Alice was dead to them anyway. It was over for them. But not for Alice.
Alice’s lashes fluttered.
Good enough. Danika tapped her with the wand, shrinking them both. With a final flick of her wand, she pointed to the bed. A white letter appeared on the empty pillows, the words: I’m happy, written on it.
That was the best she could do.
She gripped Alice’s hand and wouldn’t let go as they barreled through dimensions.
––––––––
Wrapped in shadow, Hatter stared out the blackened window. Words from poems fell in repetitive motion from his lips.
Alice’s heart swelled, aching in her chest. To go from being so close to death, to inhaling a breath free of pain. To seeing her lover. It was almost too much.
Would he think she returned only to be saved? She bit her lip.
“Hatter,” she whispered, afraid he might not hear her.
His shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t turn.
“I...I...” She was stuttering again; he always made her feel like a girl with her first school crush. She rubbed sweaty palms down the front of her cami and shorts, the same ones she’d worn the first time they’d met. The same ones he’d said she liked her in best. Her heart flipped. “Do you love me?”
Hatter shot to his feet, his eyes wild and his hair longer than she remembered.
“Alice?” he croaked, eyes glistening with a powerful emotion that tugged at her heart, gave her feet wings.
She flew into his outstretched arms, resting her ear against the firm beat of his heart.
His body trembled. “Love you,” he whispered, nuzzling her hair, his hands were frantic on her back, pushing her shirt up, touching her bare flesh. “Loveyouloveyouloveyou, always, always, my Alice, my love.”
She purred, needing to touch him, to feel the hard press of his body again.
“Clothes off,” he said, and they were naked. He picked her up, pressing her against the wall. He lifted her, forcing her to wrap her legs around his waist. The thickness of him rested against her aching opening.
So good. If this was a dream, death, she didn’t care. She never wanted to wake up.
“Hatter, I was sick.”
“Gods,” he sobbed and kissed her cheeks, her throat. “Gods, Alice.”
She gripped his face, forced him to pause and look at her. He needed to know. “I didn’t come back because of that. I almost died, but I came back for you. None of this matters if you don’t believe that.”
His eyes closed and he gently planted a kiss on her mouth, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips, and she knew he believed her. Alice’s heart thrilled.
There were no playful teases, no petting or sweet nothings whispered. This was primal need. He pushed into her liquid heat and her body was so primed, so ready the moment he slipped in fully she felt the quickening thrum of an orgasm. Her blood resonated, it moved through her like crystal song.
He was kissing her neck, his hands grasping her breasts.
“Love you, so much,” he muttered, taking her tongue, dueling with it. “Don’t ever leave me. Sorry I’m such an ass. Sorry I didn’t tell you why. Sorry for so much.”
She shook her head, feeling dizzy and lightheaded from the overwhelming sensation of him. He slid in and out, her legs tightened. She was close, her thighs started to shake.
“Never leave,” she mumbled. “Love you, so much too.”
Then they were there, he tipped his head back and roared. His hot seed came in torrents, flooding her body. His touch, his soul, it was hers. All hers.
He was her Mad Hatter and Alice was finally home.
~*~
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Alice Hu’s Red Queen’s Revenge Cupcakes:
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line mini cupcake or muffin pans with 48 mini cupcake liners or line regular-size cupcake or muffin pans with 24 regular cupcake liners.
In mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt. In another mixing bowl, stir together the eggs and oil. In a mixing cup, mix together the buttermilk, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla extract and lightly whisk. Gradually add the dry ingredients and buttermilk mixture to the egg mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. We are trying to achieve a dark brown, red cupcake color, so add more cocoa powder, if the red is not deep enough. Then add the batter to the mini cupcake liners until they are 3/4-full and bake for 13 to 14 minutes, or until done. Alternately, fill the regular-size cupcake liners and bake 22 minutes, or until done. Let the cupcakes cool completely.
Cream Cheese Frosting:
Combine the sugar, cream cheese, butter, salt, and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl and blend for 2 minutes.
And finally, the Queen’s Revenge, take a small dusting of pink peppercorn and carefully sprinkle the tops of each cupcake. Both sweet and spicy!
Leonard’s Awesome Lemon Curd: Words in parenthesis courtesy of Momma Leonard...
Ingredients
Directions
Add enough water to a medium saucepan to come about 1-inch up the side. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium size metal bowl (mind the fur now... ‘tis quite disgusting should any get into the concoction) and whisk until smooth, about 1 minute. Measure citrus juice and if needed, add enough cold water to reach 1/3 cup. Add juice and zest to egg mixture and whisk smooth. Once water reaches a simmer, reduce heat to low and place bowl on top of saucepan. (Bowl should be large enough to fit on top of saucepan without touching the water.) Whisk until thickened, approximately 8 minutes (or 20 twitches of me whiskers), or until mixture is light yellow and coats the back of a spoon. Remove promptly from heat and stir in butter a piece at a time, allowing each addition to melt before adding the next. Remove to a clean container and cover by laying a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
And Leonard being Leonard, he wanted me to let you know that some good old fashioned English scones are a must to truly savor the tangy sweetness of his momma’s curd.
Leonard’s Awesome Scones:
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a large bowl. Add butter and mix with your fingertips to a coarse meal. Add buttermilk and mix just until combined. Add currants, if desired.
Transfer dough to a floured board and divide into 2 parts. Roll each to 3/4 inch thick rounds. Cut each round into 8 wedges and place slightly separated on a greased baking sheet. Brush the tops with the cream, and bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve warm, split in half and slather with lemon curd.
Hatter says it tastes best with a good Earl Grey.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Sonya, Jennifer, Anne, and C.C. You gals are awesome and I could never have done it without you.