Chapter 14 The Magic of Travels
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE MAGIC OF TRAVELS
We set off with Lewis at the stroke of midnight, following Winston through the Cheshire Wood. All while I do my best to steer clear of the trees that chuckle now and again in my direction.
“I get the distinct feeling the trees are whispering about us,” I tell Finlo, walking closer to his side.
He shrugs. “Probably. Trees are terrible gossips.”
“Hey!” one of them shouts as we pass. “I resent that!”
I giggle, shaking my head in disbelief. “This world is so strange.”
“Perfectly so,” Lewis agrees, walking ahead of us beside Winston. The two of them talk incessantly while Finlo and I follow them.
Every so often, I eye branches of trees or passageways as we pass by, looking for the man-cat I met all those days ago.
“Looking for someone?” Fin asks me finally.
“No. I was just… I met a man, rather a cat, in the woods before, and I wondered where he was.”
“Falvious is very good at hiding,” Fin says with a grin on his lips. “Aren’t you, Fal?”
A beaming, enormous smile lights up before me, and I scream, stopping in my tracks.
The rest of Falvious comes blinking into view, his cat-like body large and striped as he swirls overhead. This time, he’s not hanging from any tree. He’s floating in mid-air.
“Got ya!” Falvious sneers, tucking back out of sight like he never was. His laugh hangs between us, however.
Fin’s smile widens. “Tricky little minx, isn’t he?”
“He is.” I clutch my chest, ducking beneath where I saw Falvious disappear, lest I run into some part of his body still floating invisibly.
“Once we’re out of the woods, we’ll make camp,” Winston announces, as the edge of the woods becomes visible.
I wonder how far I am from where I emerged into Wonderland, but don’t want to ask Finlo and upset him. Any time I mention my home, it sets something off in him.
“You’ll camp with me,” Fin whispers, his hand finding the small of my back.
“Did we bring anything for camping?” I ask him, having only packed clothes and shoes in my bag strapped to my back.
“We did.”
We, meaning him, I take it.
Once we exit the woods, I take a deep breath. The other side of them doesn’t look like The Bog at all. The sun is rising over bright-colored mountains. Pink-leafed trees blow in the gentle, jasmine-scented breeze, and the green grass is inviting.
“Wow!”
“Welcome to White Queen Territory,” Winston says. “We’ll bed here for awhile. Lewis, if you’ll get a fire going, I’ll hunt us down some breakfast.”
Lewis inclines his head.
“What should I do?” I ask, and Fin gives me a grin.
“Sit, drink some tea. I’ll get our tent up.”
“That doesn’t seem helpful, but I am thirsty,” I mutter, removing my pack and finding a log to sit on where Lewis is perching firewood into a triangle to light.
Watching Finlo work magic to erect the tent, I realize I wouldn’t have been any help. I would’ve been in the way.
After everything that happened before we left last night, I’m eager to see how our dynamic has changed. Every step Finlo and I take seems to bring us closer to furthering our relationship, which is another step away from going home.
However, I choose not to dwell on that fact and turn my attention back to Lewis, who flicks a hand toward the standing wood, causing a flame to burst to life.
“Whoa. Are you Fae also?” I ask him, unaware if this is something I should ask or if it’s best practice not to.
“We’re all some type of Fae in Wonderland, yes.”
“Fascinating.”
“Is it?”
I nod, sipping more tea before capping it.
I yawn broadly as Winston comes rushing back through camp, some kind of creature in his mouth, blood leaking from it.
Not hungry, I head toward Finlo, ducking my head inside the tent as he’s tossing our bags through the open door.
The flap closes behind me as he enters, and I wonder how he’s carried a tent and a full bed on his back, but that’s the least of my worries now.
“Are we safe to sleep here?” I ask him. Mainly because I feel as though when I close my eyes, it’ll be hours before I can open them again.
“We are. We’re in White Queen territory. We’re safe.”
So many questions swirl in my head: Is The Bog not in White Queen territory? But I’m too tired.
Pulling off my clothes, I leave only my underwear as I crawl into the bed and slide beneath the covers. I vaguely hear Finlo exit the tent before my eyes close, but I register nothing until I feel him crawl in behind me.
His arm wraps around me, and I wiggle into his body. The kiss he plants on my hair is the last thing I remember before I pull beneath the blanket of sleep with birds chirping outside the tent as day breaks around us.
“We can avoid Frabjous Day if we send her back,” Lewis whispers.
They don’t realize I’m awake and peeking around the corner as they discuss what to do with me now that a prophetess scroll has surfaced, one depicting my killing the Red Queen’s favorite Chatterwocky pet with a Vorpal Blade.
I can’t wield a Vorpal Blade. Even at age fifteen, the sword depicted on the scroll looks marginally larger than I am and heavy.
I tried to argue with them it wasn’t me, but they wouldn’t listen. Finlo is worried the Red Queen will get her hands on the scroll and come for my head, as is her way.
“I can’t send her back, I—” Fin starts, his words choking off.
“You have to. I know you want to help the girl. But she’s a danger to this world, Hatter. She’ll bring war to this bog and you know it. Remember the last time the queen rose?”
I nearly hear Finlo’s audible swallow from here.
“This bog used to be a part of Ozryn. Do you want to further align yourself with the queen you hate?”
“Well, no.”
Fin’s answer makes me swallow now, turning to pad to my room before I’m found out as tears roll down my cheeks.
“She has to go home,” Lewis argues.
I don’t hear Fin’s reply as I close my bedroom door and slide into bed. Emotion is raw in my chest as I release it into the pillow.
Thinking of going home, staying there, and never returning to Wonderland makes my heart heavy. But thinking of being their downfall makes it even heavier.
Rousing, I stretch away from the memory. Rubbing my chest, I turn onto my back, and Finlo’s arm, draped over my stomach, remains warm against my belly.
I try to keep the ache at his proximity to a minimum, but it’s hard.
He’s still snoring, and the sun outside the tent looks much higher in the sky.
I kiss the tip of his nose, and he stirs.
“Good morning,” I whisper, pecking his lips next.
He answers, deepening the kiss, quelling my inward worry that kissing him so boldly was wrong.
He stretches against me, his hard length rubbing against my leg. It has me wondering what he was dreaming about, but if I know, I won’t get the image out of my head while we resume our travels, which could prove problematic.
“Good morning, Tiger Lily,” he whispers, nipping my ear between his teeth.
“Fin,” I warn.
He presses his lips closer to my ear. “If you’re quiet…”
My brows knit together in wonder before the meaning of his words is realized. His hand slides down the front of my panties, inching toward my entrance.
I know I should stop him.
Even so, I open my legs wider, giving him more room to work as he slides his fingers inside me.
He captures my moan with a kiss. “Be quiet.”
I nod, trying my best to grip his hardness in my hand, but he pulls away from me. “Not yet.”
I can’t fathom a man who wants to please me while wanting nothing in return, but when he adds a third finger and crooks them upward, rubbing a very sensitive spot, I forget every worry I had before then.
“Fin. I can’t…” I manage, biting my fist to keep from screaming.
Removing his hand from my center, he leaves me wanton. He wafts it through the air, and the birdsong from beyond the tent silences.
“Now, you can scream all you like.” Resuming his taunting, his fingers slide back inside me, working me back into a wet, calamitous mess.
My hand searches for his length across the bed, needing to feel him, wanting to please him.
When his hips move forward, allowing me to touch him, I slide over his erection slowly. Teasing.
His answering hiss gives me life.
“Can I touch you? Under your clothes?” I ask, giving him the same respect he’d given me by asking.
“Please, Tiger Lily,” he grits out.
His fingers inside me have stopped moving, but I’m focused on him now. Not myself.
His sleep pants shove down quickly, and his thick cock springs out. My hand follows the veins as they throb beneath his silky skin. Finding the base, I wrap my hand around it, tugging upward and relishing in the bit of pre-cum glistening at the tip.
“Can I put my mouth on you?” I ask him, not wanting to push him too far, but to know what he tastes like.
“Your mouth?”
“I’ll stop if you don’t like it,” I whisper, even though I know he’s shrouded us in some kind of silence bubble.
He weighs the options as I stroke him, the hunger I’m causing winning out as he nods. “Yes.”
I pull his hand from my panties and push him onto his back, removing his pants and shoving them down the bed, somewhere hidden beneath the covers.
Like this, he looks like a magical god, his body rigid and perfect, his eyes aglow with the same hunger gnawing my insides.
I lick up the underside of him, and he lifts his head, his brows tugging together as he lets out a hiss.
Twirling my tongue around the tip of him, I delight in the sounds he makes as he fists my hair in one hand and the bedsheets in the other.
“You can tell me to stop at any moment,” I remind him. “I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
He nods. “Don’t stop.”
I grin. “Alright, then.”
Wrapping my lips around him, I slide all of him that I can into my mouth, and the moan that slithers out of his throat is something I’d like to bottle to relive over and over again.
His hand in my hair guides my mouth back down when I get to the tip of him, and slowly, he takes hold of his own pleasure.
Using me as the means to his own ends, he shoves another hand in my hair, coaxing me up and down his silky cock as his groans of pleasure blend in perpetual bliss.
“Don’t stop,” he repeats. “Don’t stop!”
I add a hand on his balls, tugging and playing with them, causing his moans to deepen, becoming animalistic.
“Tiger Lily?!” His frantic eyes meet mine in a frenzy, and I realize he’s going to come.
There’s nothing I can say to help him along or make him feel any better about what’s about to happen to him because my mouth is preoccupied at the moment.
“Coming,” he breathes, realizing on his own what’s happening as he erupts on my tongue.
I swallow down every drop as I wring all that I can out of him, grinning around his length as an ache takes us deep in my center from watching him submit to me.
I lick him clean before crawling over his lap and capturing his lips. “Was it okay?”
“More than okay. Magical.”
Here he goes again.
His hand slides my panties to the side, fingers thrusting inside roughly. He might’ve come, but he’s still keyed up, very much so.
“Fin,” I breathe, riding his hand unabashedly, the curling arousal I’d shoved to the back burner before rearing its ugly head all over again.
“You need me. I know. And now, I’ll need you for the rest of my life.”
His words nearly knock me breathless, their meaning causing a touch of worry to blend with the madness between us. If I just opened the flood gates to something more, how can I ever leave Wonderland?
I come violently, screaming his name as I ride his fingers. Even though the worry his word’s caused rides me even harder, I wonder what it would feel like the fuck the Mad Hatter.
I recall a saying about madness: There’s always some madness in love, but there is also some reason in madness. I don’t know why my brain chooses to conjure the riddle now, but as I lie beside the maddest man I know, I realize there must be some reason for everything.
I hate that I also realize I might need him for the rest of my life.