Chapter 18 Lost Girls and the Love They Find
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LOST GIRLS AND THE LOVE THEY FIND
As if knowing just what his teasing is doing to me, Finlo guides the tip of his cock through my wetness, teasing it back and forth. I’m so turned on, stars pepper my vision.
There’s a greedy hunger gnawing at me, begging me to eat, but I’m trying hard to ignore it to give Finlo control. I want this time, his first time, to be something he remembers as being his choice. I don’t want to walk away from this wondering if he wanted it. I want to know.
I want to feel it.
“You get so wet when I touch you.” His statement renders me breathless.
Lips pressing firmly to mine, his kiss breathes life back into me. Tongues tangle as I wrap my legs around him, hoping it tips him over the edge, or inside.
He holds steady, teasing back and forth through my folds, but in all my wiggling, he’s lost hold of his length.
Now, it’s laying inside my lips, pressing against my clit as he rocks back and forth.
Breaking our kiss, he breathes raggedly, one hand cupping my face, the other fisting into my hair for leverage on sanity he’s never had.
I could come like this, I realize as a prickle crawls through my spine, culminating at the base.
A cry wriggles out of me as Finlo increases his pace.
If he comes, it’ll be all over, and my determination to feel him thrust inside me will be for naught, but I can’t stop moving with him, furiously chasing the burn that begs me to end it, begs me for one more stroke against the flames of him.
“Surely, this is madness,” he manages against my lips, his sweat-beaded forehead pressing against mine.
“No. It’s more,” I cry out in haste, wrapping my arms around his neck and hanging on for dear life when I realize my orgasm is right around the corner.
“Fin, don’t stop!”
He doubles down, reaching between us to press against his cock to give me more friction, to provide us with both more friction, instead, the force on his backward stroke only serves to tip him inside me in one swift thrust, causing us both to cry out in ecstasy at the surprise intrusion.
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” he breathes, but doesn’t miss a stroke, pulling out and gliding back inside me, his face pinched in confused bliss. “Oh god, I’m sorry,” he repeats.
The next stroke takes me closer to the edge, and the look of pure euphoria on his face only calls my orgasm closer and closer, until I’m battling to keep it at bay because I’m not ready for this to end.
“Oh god, I’m—”
If he says sorry one more time…
“Coming!” he finishes, taking me over the edge with him as I lose control of myself, arching off the bed and screaming his name.
Finlo doesn’t stop, continuing to thrust inside me until he’s fully hard again, and I’m beyond grateful.
Wrapping around him, I flip us so that I’m on top, breathless and sweaty from the best orgasm of my life, but nowhere near done with this, with us.
With more.
“Oh!” Fin cries, gripping my hips as I ride him, tugging my shirt over my head and tossing it to the side of the bed where I’d thrown his hat.
His hands travel up my sides, cupping my breasts as mine find his chest, pressing down for leverage.
My hips move fluidly back and forth, and I rock him in and out of me until my next climax is right around the corner.
Pushing up off the bed onto one elbow, Fin’s other hand cups around the back of my neck, pulling me close, his lips finding mine in a flurried kiss that has me clamping my core around him.
He snarls into my kiss at the feel, and I grin, doing it repeatedly until he’s lifting off the bed and slamming inside me in a hurried fever.
“How do we ever stop?” Fin breathes.
My mouth is agape, unable to form words as my next movements have me coming apart at the seams. “Oh god. Oh god!” I moan, shuddering on Fin as I come.
“Eleanor!” He follows me, his jerky movements beneath me causing me to wiggle.
I kiss him, trying to convey how much this meant to me. How much I enjoyed myself. How much more this means.
His tongue steals my sense as it twirls against mine.
He flips us over, and he’s moving inside me as he pulls his lips away. “If you keep getting more complex, I’ll never be able to hat you.”
“What?!” I laugh, but forget all about his words when he lifts one of my legs over his shoulder and finds the perfect spot to steal my words with.
“Don’t stop,” I breathe, and we’re a sweaty mess of sex all over again.
It has me wondering if his worry should be my own. How will we ever stop?
Hours later, we’re finally lying across the bed, the sheets and blankets askew as the cool breeze drifts over us from the windows, Fin magicked open on the fourth or fifth round.
My body is sore, and I’m so tired I can barely open my eyes.
His fingers dust over my back, lulling me closer to sleep.
“I think I should tell you something.” His words have my heart rate picking up, my eyes flying wide. There was a way his tone warbled that had my stomach knotting.
“What?”
“I wasn’t honest with you before when I said that Wonderland wouldn’t let you in if you didn’t belong.”
I swallow, pulling my body off his with great effort as I look at him, anxiety pulsing in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Wonderland will let you in if you’ve been marked for entry.”
“Marked?”
He worries his lower lip with his teeth, and my nerves fray, wondering what great nightmare his admission is going to bring.
“Someone from Wonderland has to mark you magically, and then the portals will open for you in times of need. In times of distress.”
Like when I was in the woods, crying and cold…
“Who would have marked me, though? I don’t know anyone who…”
His face twists with guilt, and I sit up, finding the sheet and tugging it over my body.
I always thought Finlo and I’s meeting was some move of fate, some grand thing that we were both destined for. We’re in Wonderland, after all, so the idea can’t be that far-fetched.
“But how?”
“I saw you once. I was in the human realm, getting some trinket of Lewis’s fixed for him. We move throughout the realms undetected, with a simple glamour.”
My heart is racing, and I swear I can hear a bit of it shattering. Could it be the illusion I’ve let myself believe clamouring to the ground?
“You were in a shop with your father. You’d told him you were hungry and asked him for some food. The interaction was strange, I thought. I followed him to where he dragged you outside and down an alley, scolding you the entire way. The things he said…”
Yes, my father had a vile way of never hitting you, but still landing a blow with his words.
“I felt your anguish as if it were my own, hearing bits of the Red Queen in him as he spoke to you. Something in me urged me to intervene, even though I’m not supposed to.”
“What did you do?”
“I followed you home. Watched from afar. When I was sure the event in the shop wasn’t the only thing you were enduring, I couldn’t help myself. I snuck into your room and marked you.”
Finlo grabs the sheet, tugging it down enough to where my birthmark, which looks like a teacup on my left shoulder, runs his thumb over it.
Gasping, I realize it’s not a birthmark at all. “What triggers it to work?”
“Your sadness. I ensured you had one every time you needed an escape. Over the years, your disappearing only angered him more, though. But then, Wonderland became increasingly dangerous as the Red Queen rose to power. It wasn’t safe for you here.”
“I had to be sad in the times after I left here. Why didn’t the mark bring me back?”
“I altered the magic when I sent you back. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, you have to know that.”
“So how did I get here?”
“If you were to find yourself with nowhere to go and I was your only option, a portal would open for you.”
I clutch the sheet. I don’t know how I feel.
I went from pure bliss to confusion in minutes.
He’s why I’m here, but I also had nowhere to go… Hatter’s been my safe place all these years, but because he chose to be. I never had a choice.
He knew all along and never told me…
“This is a lot.”
“I know. I couldn’t allow you to go further without knowing.”
Even when he kept me away, barring me from Wonderland, he did it for my own good, but knowing that he stepped in the way of my destiny all those years ago means he held all the cards while I was blinded to the game, and I don’t know how that makes me feel.
I hate that he’s chosen now to tell me, even if I appreciate that he’s telling me.
Had it remained a secret, I don’t think I could stomach finding out later.
“Don’t hate me, Tiger Lily.” He sits up, cupping my cheek as his green eyes bleed with emotion.
“I’m sorry I kept it from you, but when I saw him grab you, heard the hateful things he said to you, how he threatened you, something deep in my soul caused me to act.
I still don’t know what it was or why I was moved to do what I did. I only knew I had to.”
“I don’t think I could ever hate you, Finlo. This is just a lot to digest, especially after we…” My eyes flick down to the mattress, the evidence of our lovemaking surrounding us in the form of pillows and blankets askew.
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
A pang flickers in my chest when he leans forward slowly, approaching me with hesitation as he places a kiss on my forehead.
After showering alone, taking time to mull over the new revelation Finlo dropped on me after mind-blowing sex, I dry off and slip into a silk nightgown I brought from the shopping trip to Erotsy.
When I walk back into the room, Finlo is clean as if he used a charm on himself to get clean, and the room is back together.
“I can take the couch if you’d like to have the bed to yourself.” He hangs his head, and a lump forms in my throat.
Walking closer, I slide my hand into his and look up into his honest green eyes. “No. I want you beside me.”
I don’t know if I’m ignoring what his words made me feel earlier or if that’s smart, but I don’t care right now.
Tugging him behind me, I crawl into bed.
Finlo spoons around my back, holding me close. My eyes close as his proximity soothes everything worrying me at the moment.
“No matter what happens, Tiger Lily, I’ll always love you. Even if you choose to leave.”
My eyes fly wide as he snaps his fingers, and the room darkens around us.
One tear slides down my cheek and sinks into my pillow for lost girls and the love they find, even if they have to go all the way to Wonderland to find it.