Chapter 9 Wonderland
CHAPTER NINE
wonderland
REY
“Tell me, Mr Hood. Why did you choose me? In this sea of half-naked princess-models, why choose Alice?” I angle my torso towards him fully and rest my hand on his. Can he feel the crackling air between us?
He turns his hand to let mine fall into it.
His gaze is on our fingers playing when he answers, “I had no intention of meeting anyone tonight, to be honest. But you were the life and soul of the party out there. Everyone else seemed to dance for some audience. You were dancing for fun. For yourself.” The touch of his warm skin is like small fires in my palm.
He continues, still looking at our hands.
“There are too many people masquerading as princesses in the world. I’m so tired of the sameness.
This is the first time I’ve met a flowery wonderland woman.
” His eyes meet mine in the dim light. “You seem … playful. Real. Full of life.”
His words hit home, and I’m surprised by their impact on me. He sees straight through my costume to my real self and a part of me that I love, but isn’t accepted by the people that matter the most to me. My whimsical part.
“When I was watching you, I was trying to remember the last time I truly enjoyed something the way you looked to be out there.”
“And?”
“It must have been well over ten years ago.”
“Seriously?”
His fingers lock around my hand, and the firm touch sends a jolt of heat straight to my centre.
“Seriously,” he says, so close now I can feel his breath on my lips. I hadn’t realised we’d been inching towards each other.
“You don’t enjoy your work? Or a hobby?”
“Not like that.”
“What about—” I clear my throat, “—umm … sex? Wouldn’t a man shaped like you enjoy that all the time?”
This is not me talking. My brain has disconnected, and my mouth is wired to my vagina instead.
The corner of his mouth twitches.
Oh, that luscious mouth.
“It’s enjoyable, sure. But it’s never unconstrained. There’s always something to consider. Expectations.” His voice is a rumble, his face warm and so, so close. I’m about to faint, I’m so turned on.
“Tonight is different,” my vagina makes my mouth say.
“How so?”
“We’re in masks. We’re anyone and no one. No expectations.”
He makes a low sound, almost like a growl, and I can’t take it anymore. I lean forward the last inch, and the softness of his lips meets mine. It’s such an amazing feeling.
The euphoria spreading through me makes me shiver. A strong arm wraps around me, pulling me close, and another makes its way slowly up my curves, grazing the side of my breast.
His lips are as delicious as they looked, and we kiss as if we’ve always done this.
Locking together, our tongues dance an unspoken dance we both know the steps to.
I can’t remember kissing being this good.
I don’t think it ever was. I let my hands travel up his muscular back.
Just like I wanted from the moment I laid eyes on him.
He runs his warm hand up my arm, my neck, and into my wig—then pulls away.
“Sorry,” he breathes. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s a wig,” I say, pulling the elastic and pushing the pin in place at the nape of my neck.
“Of course it is.” He traces my flowery mask with a gentle finger. “It’s a costume party. I forgot, and it surprised me.”
He studies me from behind his mask.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Who you are.”
“Does it matter?”
The intensity of his scrutinising gaze makes the blood rush in my ears, and suddenly I’m nervous. I don’t want him to care about who I am.
I’m the almost thirty-year-old who’s technically unemployed as of yesterday, with no dream except to keep trying, keep looking for that path I can feel at home on; which may or may not be found at this temporary, minimum wage internship I don’t know when starts.
It doesn’t exactly make for an attractive dating profile.
“No,” he says finally, “but tell me something about you. Even a small thing.”
“Like what?”
His hand caresses my arm, up the satin sleeves and to my collarbone, following the shape of it just above my cleavage. I breathe faster at his touch, my chest heaving.
“What do you like to do? When you’re not turning my brain to soup at a private members’ club?”
His brain is turning to soup? Fuck. He should see mine.
“I, umm, I love to paint. I used to paint all the time.”
“Used to?”
I sigh. Jesus, how much to I tell him?
“I met a wall, I guess. My parents, especially my mother, kept pressuring me to do extra. More popular styles. Bigger canvases. Keep working. And it just stopped for me.”
“Pressure can do that.”
“It lost its joy. I try to find it in everything else I do, but I’ve not been able to paint for a while.”
“A shame, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, hey, enough about me. What was it that brought you joy all those years ago?”
He laughs and leans back in the booth, relaxing his lean, muscular arms along the top of the seat. His biceps is so close to me, I want to press my face into it.
“My best friend and I used to read his dad’s vintage comics together, and we’d come up with all these stories. He was great at that. It was the best time of my life so far, I think. The years following were fun too, but we were working hard. Focused on different things.”
“What’s your favourite comic that you remember?”
“Hah, no one knows this, but I used to have a huge crush on Phantom Lady. Do you know her?”
I laugh. “Phantom Lady? Is she some kind of ghost?”
“No, she’s just a regular socialite fighting crime.” He chuckles and runs a hand over his chin. “She’s hot as hell, of course. In this little yellow playsuit and a green cape.”
“Camp.”
“Hah, I loved it. She has this wild dark hair.” He clears his throat. “Many a night was spent thinking of her.”
“I’m jealous now.”
I feel his eyes on me again as if they’re burning a hole in my skin. He’s going to get me out of this costume if he tries.
“A bartender’s meant to be coming down.” I look back toward the entrance to stop myself from saying what I had been thinking. “The service is a tad slow.”
“Perhaps that’s why the others left.” He nods towards the room behind us that’s now empty.
I hadn’t noticed.
The heat of his hand meets my cheek, his thumb skirts over my lips, and I look up at him again.
“Tell me something else,” he asks. No, he demands it, although it’s barely a whisper.
“I …”
“Masks, remember?” he adds when I let the word hang in the air. “I don’t know who you are. You don’t know who I am. I just want another small piece of the puzzle.”
He’s a persuasive man, isn’t he?
“Hmm… Well, I love dressing up, and do it regularly, but my family and my old friends don’t know about it.”
“What kind of dress-up? Cosplay?”
“Sort of. Like tonight,” I say, referring to my clothes and leaving the rest of the truth out. “Tell me something about you,” I say, trying to use the same demanding tone he has. He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip again.
I wait for him either to kiss me or to talk. My skin tingles under his touch.
“I don’t like people. Big groups like this. I’d just arrived when I met you and was only going to stay for one drink.”
“I’m glad you stayed. There are worse things you can be than an introvert.”
He laughs, and his hand drops, finding mine again.
“I’ve not been this close to a man in a long time,” I say, brushing my fingers over the large, warm hand. “That was a freebie puzzle piece, by the way. And you don’t have to pretend you’re—”
“Believe me or not, but it’s been a while for me and that smile and those eyes of yours are so utterly beautiful, I can’t seem to catch my breath.”
My eyes meet his again, and the adrenaline rushes through me as my body braces for what it’s about to do. Before my brain has caught up with the rest of me, I crash onto his lips again. He stiffens as my hands find the sides of his face, but relaxes into it, wrapping his arms around me once more.
One hand slides down and finds my knee, but pauses for a beat, as if he’s asking for permission to continue.
The firm and warm touch sends shivers through me.
I shift closer to him, moving my leg up onto his knee, and his hand slides along my thigh.
The heat in me intensifies, and it’s so strong, I’ve lost all control to lust.
Lust is my master.
Robin pulls me onto his lap, and I’m reluctantly yanked off his mouth. Our breathing settles for a beat while I stare at him from above. What I feel is reflected in his eyes, dark with need.
His erection presses hard against my sensitive centre, and a moan escapes me. He growls as he pulls me down to kiss me again. I rock back and forth against his bulge, lost in the euphoria of his dick rubbing against my clit, his tongue on mine. The sensation is building inside me already.
“This is so hot,” I whisper against his mouth. Kissing him in between words. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop.”
“Don’t stop,” he rasps. His large hands have found my arse cheeks under my dress, and he squeezes, pushing me closer to him, grinding me against him. I want to scream, I want more so badly.
“Oh my God,” I whisper against his lips. My body is pleading with me to release this pressure.
“Excuse me,” a stern voice comes from the side, and we’re both startled.
Robin’s hands disappear from my skin, and we look up to see that a server in a poppy costume has appeared at our table.
I stare at them in shock and then back at Robin.
My adrenaline is still pumping, and instead of answering the server like a normal human would, I scramble off Robin’s lap, and pull his hand.
“Let’s go!” I blurt out and drag the surprised man with me through the small room and up the stairs.
We stumble through the open bookshelf door, and I can’t stop laughing. Once through the scattered people and back in the Pink Room, I turn to wrap my arms around the waist of a grinning Robin.
He shakes his head and presses me against him.
“You’re trouble, aren’t you?”