Alison's Wonderland (2 page)

“Oh,” Lily said. Her voice was faint. “I think I need a glass of water.”

Hans put his mouth to her ear.

“All you need is this. All you need is me.”

He nodded his head.

“You’re mine.”

Lily’s heart lurched. The music had become dark and hard now, it beat against her skull. Hans let his eyes drop to her shoes. He smiled, and the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones.

“The shoes belong to me. And now you belong to the shoes.”

Lily’s feet twitched and throbbed, and she realized in a split second that she was bewitched. The shoes were a poisoned chalice, a glittering prison, two seductive traps that she’d walked straight into. She pushed Hans away and dropped to a crouch, tugging at the straps on her ankles. It was as though the buckles were soldered shut. Her feet were burning now, and her breath was fighting in her throat. She looked up at Hans and saw twin fires in his eyes, a terrible, cold desire. The tip of his tongue flickered over his lips.

“Mine,” he said.

Desperate and confused, Lily reached to her throat. Her hand brushed the wilted corsage pinned to her breast, and she clutched at the stems. A burst of sweet, green perfume floated from it. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Lily gripped hold of the flowers and held on to them tight. Her head hurt. Her eyes were bleary. With fingers wet from sap, she rubbed at her eyelids.

It was like the sky opened up. A fresh breeze cut through the thick atmosphere of the ballroom, smelling of cut grass and brine and newly dug earth. Lily looked around.

Hans was a few feet from her, but he seemed to shrink as she looked at him. Her eyes were clear. There was dandruff on his shoulder and dust on the chandelier. The music faded. Lily felt an insistent pain in her feet, and looked down at the red shoes. Irritated, she kicked a shoe across the dance floor, and stepped lightly out of the other.

The floor was dusty and small pieces of grit dug into the soles of her feet, but it felt good. She flexed her toes. Lily heaved a deep sigh.

“Well, Hans, you know that was fun, but I think it’s time I got going.”

He didn’t answer, but instead made a hissing sound, like a balloon when the air is let out of it.

“No, don’t fuss, I don’t need a ride home,” Lily continued, rubbing mascara from under her eyes. “It’s been a great night. Really interesting. Although—” Lily leaned toward Hans and whispered loudly across the empty dance floor, “You might want to lay off the Viagra. Too much of a good thing, you know?”

With that, she blew him a light kiss off the end of her fingertips, turned and left.

Spin a Yarn

It was a random boast. Too many gin and tonics, too aware of how my ass looked in a new pair of dark jeans. Far too aware of how he’d been watching me across the loud space of a bar table all night, long fingers reaching up to push a few strands of dark hair away from his blue eyes. Not a close friend, but still a friend. And for long enough you’d think I’d have noticed him that way before. But sometimes that’s how it happens, a flip switches, and the guy at the edge slips into the center. He is suddenly all you can see.

This flip was the conversation that turned from usual drunken rants to sex. Specifically to bondage sex. After a few minutes of the boys around the table laughing and the girls not really saying much, I pushed the lime into my gin and tonic with the end of my stir stick. “I don’t know what the big deal is.” I imagined being stuck somewhere, seat-belted in, unable to reach the drink holders or turn the knobs on the dashboard. “I like to move when I have sex. Why be tied down?”

Suddenly, the quiet man that I mostly knew from group nights out was leaning across the table, creating near-perfect paper strips from the bar napkin, talking about ropes and twine and knots in a power voice, a low light flickering in his eyes. He wasn’t talking to me, not specifically, but his gaze flicked to my wrists as he talked. “There’s freedom in constraints.”

I curled my hands around my glass, the bones feeling exposed, the pulse thump-thumping beneath the skin. “There’s constraint in constraints.” My words had made more sense in my head.

He followed the movement of my hand with his eyes, tearing another near-perfect strip from the edge of his napkin as he waved my comment away. “But it’s not really about what you use to tie someone down. At least, not the physical thing you use to tie someone.”

He laid the thin strip of torn napkin over my wrist, holding the edges with a few fingers to the table, as though paper and pressure was enough to keep me there.

“It’s other things. Isn’t it, Elly?” His eyes settled on mine. Such intense blue, like a weight all their own, trying to keep me against the overly warm bar seat.

I dropped my gaze to watch the lime floating in my drink, raising both shoulders in a shrug, my wrist slipping along beneath the paper. “You’re asking the wrong girl,” I said, when I could finally meet his eyes again.

He arched a brow, the low bar lights flaring in his gaze as he shifted his head. “Am I?”

“Yes.” The others faded away. Did they grow quiet on their own or just slip into the edges of my vision, sliding into the place he’d occupied so recently? “I’ve never been bound to anything. Man or bed or chair. And I don’t intend to be.”

He stood suddenly, the lean movement of predator, still holding the napkin strip across my wrist with one hand. His
other hand snaked forward to tighten into the length of my blond hair, fisting his fingers at the nape of my neck to pull my head back slightly. My mouth gasped open—I couldn’t help it—and then I was looking up at those blue eyes. Darkening to near black on the edges. “No?”

A single word. A challenge. Something that I would have ignored most times. If not for the drinks. Or for the fact that his fingers were still on either side of my wrist, tightening in, capturing my skin between them. If not for the way my body suddenly responded, a dizzy spin of want that left me hollow and wet.

“No.” Fingers digging into my head, holding me. I tugged my head forward, but his grip only tightened. So tight I saw threads of black and gold through my vision, and still the blue of his eyes through it all.

“You’ve never…” I didn’t know if the others could hear him, even though he was leaning down slightly, the press of his fingers keeping me there. “…called someone master?”

I pulled my body away although my hand, inexplicably, didn’t follow. I was sure I’d meant it to. “Hell, no. And I never will.”

“Shall we bet on that?” he asked. I was sure the others could hear him now, as well as my own bitten-back moan in response. What was my body doing to me? Betrayer.

Still, I suddenly and desperately wanted to prove this man wrong. I didn’t know if it was to knock his ego a notch or soothe my own pulse, which was thumping hard beneath my skin.

I took a deep, unsteady inhale. “What do I get if I win?”

“You won’t,” he said.

“Then there’s no reason to bet, is there?”

He laughed and let go of my hair, touching a single finger to the corner of my mouth as he bent and said softly, his lips
whispering along the curve of my ear, “What’s my name, Elly?”

I’m sure I looked at him like he was stupid. How long had we been friends? Of course I knew his name.

“Jackson,” I said. At the same time, I pulled my wrist up, breaking the napkin.

As the paper split, releasing my wrist, he bowed down again to drag his teeth along the curve of my ear. “That’s one.”

Spinning Round

Time goes, as it does. I didn’t see him for nearly six months. I’m sure I didn’t think of him. Or his bet. Or the way I sometimes thought I felt his fingers in my hair, tangling me up.

And then, at a wedding, there he was. Tuxed up in a way that changed him once again. Prince maybe. Or young king, before he leans old and weary. He turned, halfway through the ceremony, looked into me with those blue eyes, and I forgot his name. Forgot my own. I had an image of my wrist held to the table with no more than a paper strip, remembered his fingers threaded in my hair. The heat that filled my cheeks—I knew I was turning the same color as the blood-red dress I wore, and I dropped my head, my blond hair falling forward around me. Closing my eyes for so long, I missed the bride coming up the aisle.

At the reception, he stepped beside me near the dance floor, keeping a careful distance. He touched me lightly on the inside of my arm. Even his voice was soft.

“Come and dance?”

Soft hands, safe hands around my back, careful how he touched me. He brushed a few strands of my hair from my face, his fingertips barely touching my skin, soft as silk. I looked in his eyes, waiting for him to say something like he did before.

“How have you been?” is what he asked.

So formal, so regal and considerate, I wanted to scream. I wanted to arch my hips against him and beg him for…what? I didn’t know. I wanted to see what he would do with a paper napkin, a wedding streamer, the straps of my dress, the bride’s veil.

I bit my lip instead, answered with the one word I could find. “Fine.”

I couldn’t think how to turn the conversation, so I danced with him, aching. I draped my wrists along his shoulders, turning them softly, just to see. I let my long blond hair brush his shoulders. My eyes on him, silent desire, but he merely tucked my cheek to his chest lightly, swayed to the bad music without touching his hips to mine. Every touch so soft, I couldn’t help but bend my body toward it. By the end of the song, I decided I must have confused that night. Or his comments. He’d been drunk. So had I. Perhaps our conversation had been something for only the dark of a backlit bar. Perhaps he’d forgotten our bet.

Besides, I told myself as he maneuvered me around the floor, I hadn’t wanted that, right? No bondage. No stupid calling someone master. Why did I care? I chalked it up to the soft whisper of fabric as his hips edged along mine and to the feel of his breath along my cheek.

As the dance ended, he stepped away with a gentle smile. The quiet press of his hand to my shoulder was so formal that I again thought of kings and royalty. Then he reached and curled a hand to the back of my neck, the blue of his gaze hardening as his eyes settled on mine. His hold was so strong and sudden that I yanked my head forward, pulling it from his grip. Too late, I realized what I’d done.

He dropped his head, mouth edging to the curl of my ear as he laughed quietly along my skin. “What’s my name, sweet Elly?”

“Prick,” I sputtered, so in want and confused that I was sure the dance floor was swaying beneath me.

He winked at me before he pulled away and left me standing in the middle of the floor by myself, only his words remaining. “That’s two.”

Spun to Gold

I spent two weeks arguing with myself. Wearing my seat belt extra tight in the car to remind myself why I didn’t want it. Didn’t want him. But all I could see were his blue eyes reflected in the sky of my windshield.

I called him. Some faltering tone in my voice about dinner, or drinks. I looked at my wrists while I held the phone, their fine bones, the thin length of them. I bent my head forward and touched a few fingers to the nape of my neck.

“Tell me where you live,” he said, and I did.

I slipped into jeans. Then a sundress. Then a T-shirt and a soft yellow skirt that swirled around my thighs. I paced, touching things, asking myself what I wanted. Unable to say the answer aloud.

When he got there, I opened the door, unsure whether I’d find predator or king. Or perhaps just the man I’d known for so long, before that night at the bar.

He was neither. And all three. Leaning against my door frame in jeans and a shirt that fit his wide shoulders. Arms crossed, those long fingers hidden from view, he slid in through the door finally, gesturing to the couch without a word.

I sat, fiddling with my skirt. Wishing I was anywhere else.

“Hold still,” he said, reaching for my head.

The pain was small and short, the backward prick of a needle, and then he was holding one of my long hairs in his fingers. “Golden thread,” he said, “to bind you with.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sound eased the nervousness in my stomach and made me feel sick and stupid at the same time. “That? A hair?”

Without saying anything, he pushed the coffee table out of the way, then pressed both hands to my shoulders, easing me back. Scooting my hips forward as though I was a mannequin. With just his fingertips, he pushed my shirt up, then laid the hair across my stomach, the thinnest of gold threads. A breath would blow it away.

Down on his knees, he looked up at me, sending me swimming in blue. “Last chance, Elly,” he said, and his teeth were big when he smiled. “You decide.”

He didn’t wait, just curled his fingers beneath my skirt and hooked them into my panties, began to ease them down my thighs with tiny pulls. Bit by bit, until he caught them and pulled them over my knees. His tongue curled along the inside of my thighs, meaningless circles that echoed the turns of my stomach, the spinning ache that made me want to push my hips up from the couch.

With the very tips of his fingers, he pushed the fabric of the skirt up along my thighs, watching me with every inch of skin he exposed. Until I was naked and he was dipping his head between my thighs, glossing his tongue along the heated space between. And still I let him do all these things. I wanted him to do all these things. Only a thread, a hair, nearly invisible, holding me still.

“Wait…” I said. But he didn’t. He dragged his tongue like a cat along me until I was panting, the hair across my stomach rising and falling with each breath. So much as a movement would send it curling and spinning, off into nowhere.

His eyes stayed on the hair even as he slipped a finger inside me, then two, curling them upward, pulling me forward with that small gesture that made me cry out and reach forward to thread my fingers lightly into his hair. I breathed and
breathed, careful not to aim my exhales at the hair that lay across my stomach. His thumb touched my clit, and I rose and jerked, the hair slipping just a bit. Settling into a slow, rhythmic circle, his thumb made me want to call his name, to beg him not to stop. I bit the sound back, my teeth hard over my lips.

He laughed, the sound vibrating along my skin. He lapped me between words, until each draw of his tongue sounded like language and each sound felt his tongue. “Don’t…move….”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. Trapped and yet not. My outside still enough that the inside was all I could feel, the pleasure that wove itself through me with its golden promise of release.

“Please…” I begged. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t caught. I arched my body—not the outside, not my skin and bones, but the desire that rose in me, uncoiled itself into a long thread of pleasure. Asking for more, keeping my stomach perfectly still beneath the length of golden hair, while the rest of me spun and spun and spun.

“My name, Elly,” he said.

“Oh…” I clenched my teeth, trying to keep my movements still. “Please…”

He began to pull his thumb away from me, slowing his circles. Sliding his fingers from me. His retreat left me already empty. I wanted to shove myself over him, then sink his fingers inside me with a fast, hard pierce. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t.

“Name,” he said softly, flicking his thumbnail along the hardened point of me until my breath caught in my throat.

“M-master,” I called out, my rasped voice rising in the air between us.

He grinned that dangerous grin of his, making me want to take it back, but it was too late. He was tightening his thumb back to my skin, cocking his fingers inside, his tongue
curling over and over my skin until I was sure I was melting beneath the soft spin of his touch, turning liquid, turning gold.