Chapter 12 A Joyous Rescue
CHAPTER TWELVE
A JOYOUS RESCUE
Things have been awkward between Fin and me since we kissed, but I expected nothing less.
He admitted he’s still trying to reconcile his love for my childhood self and his passion for me now, which makes perfect sense.
In my memories, there’s a stark contrast between crushing on someone older than you and being able to act on it at an older age.
I loved him then for his kindness and the safety he offered.
Now, I’m growing to love him for more grown-up reasons.
Today’s the day we rescue Prospero from the Red Queen’s castle, and I’m not thrilled at the prospect of getting caught, but I want to help Fin any way I can for all he did for me then, and all he’s done for me now.
He was how I survived my childhood; I know it.
He’s also a four-hundred-year-old Fae, living in a magical world that I shouldn’t have ever stepped foot inside and am now considering home.
I haven’t tried to find the portals out of Wonderland in the last two weeks, and half of me wonders if I’ll ever try. I’m becoming too complacent.
“I’ve done it!” Fin shouts, coming out of the bathroom with a wrench in hand and his cheeks flushed. There’s sweat beading on his brow, and I can’t help how my thighs press together as I take him in.
“What have you done?” I ask him.
“Come. See for yourself.”
Half of me hopes he hasn’t harmed the bathtub in whatever mad venture he’s undertaken this morning because I need a bath desperately after last night’s whirlwind tea party, where a food fight broke out. I can still feel tarts in my hair.
Walking into the bathroom, I spy a new pipe jutting from the wall. “Fin! Is that a shower?”
“It is!”
“Like in my world?”
“I heard you telling Lewis you wished for a hot shower like at home, and I tasked him with figuring out what this shower was you spoke of.”
Turning a knob now added to the wall, I’m thrilled when the spray of water jets down from above. “Oh, Fin! This is perfect.”
“I want you to feel at home here, Tiger Lily.” The husky tone of his voice rakes against my skin and I straighten, breathing through the reaction before turning back towards him.
I’ve been trying my damnedest not to force everything I’m feeling on him.
I don’t turn around. “Thank you, Fin.”
The hand holding the wrench curls around my stomach, pressing my back into the hard lines of his body. His lips graze my ear. “You’re welcome.”
My eyes shut, my body reacting in an all-out flare of lust that nearly consumes me.
“I magicked the water to remain hot for you, so you can stay there as long as you’d like. Lewis also brought you some soaps from your world, they’re on the sink.”
“Thank you both.” Turning, I allow him to see the way my body has reacted to his touch: my flushed cheeks, my hardened nipples, the way my thighs press together.
His eyes grow hungry, but he merely swallows. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Enjoy. Make sure you don’t fall down the drain. Downland isn’t as nice as Wonderland, I assure you.”
Turning, I spy the drain, swallowing over a growing lump of fear. “I’ll try not to.”
Stripping out of my clothes, I step under the spray of water. I’ll need to remind Finlo that showers need curtains. But for today, I don’t mind feeling exposed beneath the cascade of hot water beating my skin.
The flushed feeling of arousal from Fin earlier still lingers, and not for the first time, I think about slipping my hand somewhere forbidden to curb the ache.
I’m always either with Fin or he’s nearby. All the stories I’ve read about the Fae claim they have heightened hearing. When I’m in the bath, it’s too silent to masturbate, but the sound the pipework and the shower are giving off might be enough…
I’m eyeing the door that doesn’t lock as my breathing speeds, my nipples hardening all over at the prospect of making myself come for the first time in weeks.
Pretty soon, there’s no other option because not coming would put me in a foul mood the rest of the day, and I have to focus to get Prospero out of the Red Queen’s dungeons.
Turning my back toward the door, I slide my hand over my breasts, pinching them. Thrill races my veins as my hand slinks over my belly, finding my clit first.
My mouth drops open at the first swirl of my clit.
I’m becoming less aware of my surroundings as I lean into how it feels to touch the ache that’s been tormenting me for far too long.
Sitting on the tub’s edge, my body facing the door, the thrill of Fin possibly entering only adds to the titillation.
My fingers skirt my entrance, teasing before sinking inside.
Brazenly, I forget my surroundings and let out a moan, but I’m too focused on relieving this ache that now has molten lava bolting through my veins like lightning.
My head falls back when I grind the heel of my palm against my clit, deepening the plunge of my fingers.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
The expletive covers the opening the door, but not the clicking of it closing.
My eyes flutter open, my head lifting to look at Finlo, whose green eyes scan every inch of the situation he’s walked into.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, not stopping my hand’s movements.
With him here, I’m enlivened. My body arches into my hand. Only one hand grips the tub’s edge now for leverage.
Finlo walks closer, dropping to his knees beside the tub, his eyes still scanning between where I ride my hand and my face.
I whimper, trying to keep my voice low so anyone who might be about won’t hear me.
“Louder,” he says, and I don’t know why that one word has my blood heating further.
Moaning unbidden, it only makes my hand’s movements feel better. Soon, I’m increasing the pace of my fingers, while my body writhes on them, building a tension that won’t last.
“I’m going to come,” I whimper. “Oh God, Fin. I’m going to come!”
His heated eyes watch me explode.
My body shatters, my scream ripping through the room like an electric current, as weeks of pent-up energy snap like a twig under too much pressure, and I’m relieved—finally.
When I remove my hand from my center, my legs are too shaky to stand.
“I’ve got you,” Fin says breathlessly as he takes my hand and helps me to my feet, shutting off the water and wrapping a towel around me.
I can’t help but notice the thick erection in his pants, even if he seems to ignore it.
My brazenness continues. My hand rubs over his length, feeling like a fucking queen when he sputters out a breathless moan. “This right here. This is attraction. When you’re ready, I’ll make you come.”
He swallows thickly. “We have to get to the palace.”
He turns and leaves me standing in the tub, clutching my towel. Part of me feels foolish for what I just said to him.
The other part feels brave and in control.
If he doesn’t understand sexuality, who better to teach him than a beautiful, big-headed girl he already loves?
I ignore the feeling that I’m going to corrupt such a perfect man with my wantonness as thrill races along my inner thighs, straight for my gluttonous core.
Fin’s eyeing me like he wants to dissect me like one of his hats, and Ariadne is giving him a look of confusion as she walks us through what we’re going to do.
Fin already hatted the queen, and we have until sunset to see Ariadne before we’ll be escorted out of the palace. At this time, we’re left unguarded, which will prove foolish.
“So, you needn’t eat this one until we knock on the teapot three times. Hatter has already made clothes for your different sizes, they’re in the pot with instructions on each one.”
“Who will ferry me to and from the dungeons again?” I ask her,
Ariadne’s frustration is evident, but she’s kind despite it. “Penelope from the kitchens. She’s a friend. We can trust her.”
I nod, meeting Fin’s eyes, but he darts them away from me.
More and more since the moment in the bathroom this morning, I feel as though I made the wrong move. I pushed him too far, too fast, and now I’m going to lose the progress we both had, which is madness. I need to find a portal, go home where I belong, and be with a man more at my speed.
The thought has my heart aching, however.
Focusing on the task at hand, I take the cookie from Ariadne and bite it. I shrink inside my massive clothes.
Ariadne shields me from Fin, crouching with a dress to help me into it, but he brushes her aside. “I’ll do it.”
It gives me hope I didn’t ruin things between us this morning. Even if there’s a tightness set in his jaw, I rarely notice there.
I step out of the lump of my massive dress, nude beneath it, and Finlo helps me into the small swath of dress he made for me just for this purpose.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“Of course.” Still, the hardness of his jaw frays my nerves.
He flattens his hand against the floor, and I walk onto it, clutching the rest of the cookie I’ll need to shrink back down to get back into the teapot when all this is over.
Opening the lid, Fin drops me inside.
I hit cushions in the base of it and bounce, a grin on my lips that he thought of everything.
There isn’t a larger dress inside like Ariadne thought there would be, but the space is limited. I realize that Prospero will just have to avert his eyes if he’s offended by my nudity.
“Good luck, Tiger Lily,” Finlo whispers before closing the lid and shrouding me in darkness.
I peer out of one of the ceramic holes as Ariadne greets Penelope and hands my teapot over to her.
I fall backward from the jostling.
My mind is racing in a million different directions after this morning, so much so that this isn’t what I want to be doing.
I want to sit Finlo down and discuss this morning’s events. I want to apologize.
That’ll have to wait, unfortunately.
Until after the joyful rescue of his closest friend.
Penelope was told to knock twice on the pot and open the lid for me to use the ladder Finlo installed to escape once I’m inside Prospero’s cell, so when the knock comes, I scramble to the ladder, making it to the lid as she removes it.
She helps me out before exiting the cell, leaving the door open. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” she whispers.
The bottle in my hand is cold, and the tag reads much like the tag in the room I first landed in Wonderland. Drink me, it says.
My mind is spinning, wondering if Hatter’s magic was behind me finding myself here all along.
Or if fate keeps bringing us together with otherworldly magic, even he doesn’t possess.
Such thoughts are whimsy, so I stow them away.
Drinking down the potion, I squeak when I grow taller through the cloud of smoke filling the cell.
“Who are you?” a raspy voice asks.
“Eleanor. I’ve come to get you out of here, but we must be quick.”
“Eleanor?” Prospero says, and the smoke before him clears as if he willed it. His beady eyes narrow, dark against the blue of his silky skin. “You’re not the right Eleanor.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Who sent you, Wrong Eleanor?”
I growl in exasperation. “Hatter and Ariadne.”
At this, he perks up. “Then you might be the right Eleanor, after all.”
“I don’t know. Look, I need you to eat some of this and get into the teapot with me.”
“Where are your clothes, Wrong Eleanor?”
“I outgrew them,” I explain, finding the tiny dress I’d been in lying on the floor in a speck.
“Mm. I don’t know if I should show up to tea with a nude companion. Whatever would Hatter think of me?”
I rub my temples. “I have another dress inside the teapot for when I’m small again. I will be dressed when we arrive.”
“A plan. I do like a plan. However, I am quite comfortable down here. They feed me, keep me stocked with smoke, and sometimes, the Tweedles come and give me treats.”
“You don’t want to be rescued?”
“Of course, I do. Would you want to live in the Red Queen’s dungeons?”
I’m very confused, so I keep my lips sealed.
“We have little time. I’ll leave you a chunk of this cookie, and if you want to come with me, come with me. I can’t force you.”
Eating my own bite, I shrink to the small size I was before, awaiting Penelope’s help to get back into the pot.
Whenever I’m lifted and dropped back inside, I hasten to get the next dress Hatter left for me on. It’s purple this time and fits like a glove.
“I still think you’re the wrong Eleanor, but I thank you for your help today,” Prospero says from behind me, and I scream, turning and clutching my chest.
“You scared me.”
“I have that effect.” He puffs his pipe, smoke filling the teapot as we’re carried back upstairs on a tray.
Will this world ever feel normal?