“Penny for your thoughts?”
I glance up at the other rabbit, the white one who’d come with the Wonderland inhabitants to help save Neverland, Wendy’s friend. I never bothered telling Wendy and the others that it’s probably pointless. Why not just let Neverland die? We’ve all lived long enough.
Even as I think that, the image of Tiger Lily’s lifeless eyes in my brain makes me change my mind. I don’t want the Chieftess to die. Not her. Giggles from the little girl dancing around the flames with the others reach my ears and I change my mind again. There’s two people I don’t want to die.
“My thoughts aren’t worth anything, let alone a penny,” I answer, looking deep into the flames. For some reason, looking at the White Rabbit for too long makes me uneasy, as if I’m looking into some twisted version of a mirror. It doesn’t make sense—we look nothing alike—but the overwhelming feeling still creeps in.
White sits down beside me and I glance at him in confusion. Most of the inhabitants of Neverland avoid me, or at least pretend I don’t exist. I haven’t been around the Wonderland ones much, except for March, but I expected them to do the same. When the rabbit sits down with me, it throws me off so much, I shift uncomfortably. It’s been too long since anyone attempted small talk with me.
“You know,” White says, picking up a small pebble from the ground and rolling it between his fingers. It shines, telling me it’s one of the rough jewels easily found in Neverland, but White doesn’t seem to care. He tosses it into the fire. “Eventually, you find something that brings the light back into your darkness.”
His words catch me off guard. Not small talk at all, it seems. The White Rabbit wishes to talk about feelings, something I prefer to avoid, but something in me tells my brain White knows what I suffer from. Like calls to like.
For that reason alone, I answer him.
“I already have, and she doesn’t deserve to sit in the darkness with me.”
The corner of White’s lips quirks up, as if he already knows who I’m talking about. Perhaps, he does. I’m not being subtle about my gazes towards Tiger Lily. I don’t really care if anyone sees my longing, not anymore. It’s too thick to fight. “Maybe not,” he agrees, tossing another jewel into the fire. “But she deserves the chance to decide for herself.”
I frown and look towards the building where Tiger Lily and the Hare disappeared to. “She did.”
“Just because there are two doesn’t mean one loses.”
I flick my eyes to White, wrinkling my brow. I didn’t expect that answer. I didn’t expect anything at all. Two mates? Though March seems okay with that, had even attempted to goad us into that very thing, but I can’t. The darkness in my throat thickens. “My destiny has long been written in the stars I fly among,” I answer, looking down at the ground. I pick up my own jewel and rub it between my fingers, bleeding some of my magic into it so the hard casing melts away, leaving a precious green gem in its wake. I decide I’ll give it to Aniya.
“Prophesies are dangerous, but they can be changed,” White argues, watching the way I work the gem. “We did so in Wonderland.”
“I don’t want to change it,” I rasp, picking up another jewel to repeat my action. Aniya will want more.
White sighs. “Then understand the impact your destiny will have when you don’t fight it. There are others who suffer from you giving up.” White sighs. “I know what it’s like to yearn for death, Peter. Before I met Jupiter, I tried. I slit my wrists, I threw myself off cliffs, I tested fate, and you know what happened?” I look at him curiously. “It didn’t change anything. Nothing changed until I met Jupiter, then my world shifted.” He glances toward the redhead in question, her smile wide as she laughs at something Wendy says. Something pangs in my chest. Tiger Lily had laughed like that earlier because of March. “When you decide to live for something, live for yourself first, and then they don’t have to sit in the darkness with you, because they’ll be dragging you into the light without ever meaning to.”
I hear his words, but I know I’ll never put Tiger Lily through that. I don’t want her to have to save me. I’m not worth saving. I never was.
“I’ve long since come to terms with my role in this world, Rabbit,” I whisper. “While I have a conscious now and my shadow is gone, it still changes nothing about what’s to transpire.”
Far too clever eyes meet mine, the fire reflected in their silver depths. “Doesn’t it, though?” he asks. “Doesn’t it change everything?”
He leaves me with his words, standing to join his mate again. She grins up at him, and when he offers his hand to dance, she happily goes along with it. I watch them for long minutes before I move from my place. I can’t stay there. I can’t witness the happiness and the happy thoughts.
I slip into the darkness, letting it swallow me, until I’m not sure if I’m even breathing anymore.
Doesn’t it change everything?
Yes, my mind whispers, but still I must follow the stars. . .
Chapter Twenty-Two
March freezes the moment I jerk his shirt open, and I’m both confused and surprised. I’m confused because, he had to have known we would be taking our clothes off when we came in here. Did he expect to keep his shirt on? I’m surprised because, I don’t know what I expected when I got the March Hare naked, but this certainly isn’t it.
With careful fingers, I reach out and touch one of the many raised lines—scars—that cover March’s body. They form some sort of design, but it’s not until I lean back a little that I see it in all its glory. The design speaks of something ancient and not of our worlds, though that’s a given considering March isn’t from Neverland. It looks like someone took the time to carve each and every swooping line into his skin with a blade until it created a design that both mimicked something alien and still appearing in the shape of a ribcage.
“Who?” I ask, glancing up in March’s eyes. He’s watching me closely, as if expecting this to make me run. The scars are gruesome, sure, but they’re also kind of beautiful, marks of a warrior who survived.
“The better question is why.” March’s voice is hardly a whisper, as if he’s afraid to speak too loudly. No one can hear us, not over the sounds of the celebration outside. He could be yelling the words, and no one outside would hear. “In Wonderland, I’m the Keeper of Memories.”
I raise my brow. “And what does being Keeper of Memories have to do with the scars covering your chest?” Even with the thin, barely puckered lines, it isn’t lost on me how muscled March is. I reach out and run my nails across his defined abdomen, going gentle when I reach the scars. I don’t know if they hurt or not, as some scars can, so I softly trace the lines there.
“They’re my mark to bear, for being the Keeper. An enchantment that allows all memories to remain, the ability to make tea and pass those memories on, and a slow wear on my sanity. The Mark of The Memory Keeper has a long history of driving Hares mad, including my father.”
I run a finger along one slopping line. “Are you ashamed of them?”
March reaches up and wraps strong fingers around my wrist, holding me still when I would have continued to trace the lines. “I don’t want you to stop looking at me the way you do,” he admits. “Every new thing revealed about me, I expect you to run in the opposite direction.”
“Is that common?” I wrap my arms around his neck and his hands fall gently to cup my waist. “The running?”
“It’s been so long since. . .” he trails off. “The last time I was able to walk freely from my cabin, it was normal to be looked at like a monster. After the enchantment broke, I’ve hardly had a chance to do much more than survive.”
His honesty moves me, this Hare who I expected to lie or hide parts of him he thinks I will fear. I don’t believe the way someone appears makes them a monster. Some of the gentlest creatures Aniya calls are the most gruesome looking. What makes a man a monster is his capacity for evil, something we’re all capable of. I know that now. I lack some of the h
umanity Wendy clings to, but I still have my morals. The sight of March kneeling before Aniya flashes in my mind and I smile. March isn’t a monster, because he chooses not to be, even though he has the capabilities to be one.
I reach up and pull my headdress off, my weapon, and set it gently to the side, before my fingers carefully unbraid my hair. Something about the man in front of me makes me want to be vulnerable in front of him, too, to strip myself of my war paint and stand bare before him. His eyes follow my actions, watching carefully. I shake my hair out and reach for the hem of my top, pulling it over my head before March can protest. I’m littered in scars, too, from before I was Chosen, but they’re only signs of mischief, of competition with Wolfbane, rather than any design.
March’s eyes turn molten when I reveal my breasts, his hands slowly moving up, running his rough fingers across my skin, pausing to trace my own scars.
“We all bear our marks,” I murmur, reaching up to stroke the ear that’s missing the top half. The flesh where it ends is jagged and rough with scar tissue, but I run my thumb across it and March nearly melts against me. “It’s just a matter of finding someone who sees passed them.”
His breath rattles in his chest with my words and he pulls me harder against him. I happily do so, the tips of my breasts rubbing against his scars and making me ache stronger. I want March. I need him.
When March leans down and brushes his lips softly against mine, it’s gentler than I expect, a slow consuming, as if tasting me, imprinting me into his memories. This isn’t the same kiss we shared before I’d opened his shirt. This is slow, calculated, and it only drives my need higher. When his fingers thread into my loose, wild hair and clench, tilting my head the direction he needs to, I moan against him. I hook a leg around his hip and grind down against his hard length straining through his trousers with the beat of the drums outside the walls.
With strong arms, March lifts me completely until both legs are wrapped around his waist, holding me against him with one arm while the other wraps around the back of my neck to hold me still. He turns, somehow graceful enough with my weight to move through the small room and drop us on a soft bed, the down whooshing with the sudden rush of air our bodies make. March breaks the kiss to trail his lips down my jaw, my neck, before focusing attention on my breasts. Threading my fingers into his hair, mindful of his ears, I hold him to me, arching my back for him to have better access.
“I believe I promised to devour you,” he murmurs against my skin, his strong fingers hooking into my trousers and pulling down, pushing the leather off my hips and down my legs. He does it so smoothly, I barely notice as he continued raining kisses on my flesh.
“You did,” I gasp, his tongue tracing my hipbone. Even touching something so mundane, desire pools between my thighs.
March’s strong fingers curl around my knees and wrench my thighs apart. I didn’t even realize I’d been clenching them until he drags them apart, opening me up to his eyes. I relax beneath his gaze, feeling devoured before he even touches me, but the moment he leans down and licks between my thighs, a long single stroke, I end up grabbing his ear a little too tightly. He doesn’t complain, but I force myself to relax my hold there and instead clench my fingers in the sheets.
The next time he puts his mouth to me, I nearly scream. There are no gentle movements, no easing me into the pleasure. March promised to devour me, and that’s what he does. My back arches off the bed as his tongue rolls my clit, sucking, his mouth destroying me so simply, I can’t seem to form a coherent thought. I can’t do much more than gasp, my heart rate beating frantically with the drums outside.
When he dips a finger inside my core, I reach down and hold him against me, begging him not to stop.
“March,” I groan, the word strangled as it slips from my lips.
He doesn’t answer, but he adds another finger, stroking inside me slowly compared to the way his lips move, his tongue dancing in a way I can’t follow. The rhythm isn’t consistent, as if it moves to his own beat rather than anything else, but it doesn’t need to. He drives me higher and higher, until I’m gasping for breath, until I stand on the cliff of orgasm, prepared to throw myself from it.
March twirls his tongue around my clit and I shatter, pressing too tightly against his face but he doesn’t seem to care. My legs shake with the force of the orgasm even as his movements slow, even as he pulls back and licks his middle finger coated with my juices.
“As sweet as a lily,” he murmurs before pressing a kiss to my knee.
Panting, I sit up and circle his neck, pulling him over me with ease. He braces himself on his arms on either side of me, careful not to crush me. I wouldn’t care if he did as long as he continues.
“Impatient,” he teases, kissing me. I can taste myself on his lips, and it should revolt me, but instead, it only turns me on more.
“If you don’t do something, I’ll be devouring you, Hare,” I growl, my voice breathy so it loses some of the threat.
“Devour me,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to my nipple. “Claim me. Strip me from my skin. I wouldn’t care, as long as it’s you who’s doing it.”
I reach between us and slip my hand inside his still frustratingly clothed bottom half, circling his cock and stroking. He jerks against me, his eyelids fluttering briefly before he reaches down and kicks his trousers off. I don’t have time to look if he has more scars. He circles my waist and lifts me, turning until he sits on the bed and I straddle his lap, his cock standing tall between us. The position is more intimate almost, staring into his face like I am. When I reach up and brush my fingers across his cheek, his nose, his lips, he lets me, staring at me as I’m some bright sun, but I’m not.
We’re just a couple of soft monsters finding peace for a moment.
His hands lift me until I’m above his length, then with slow movements, he lowers me on his cock, stretching me wide, my breaths sawing in and out of my chest at the feeling. He’s large, but not so large that I worry. Everything about the March Hare is larger than life; I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
The tendons on March’s neck strain under his slow pace, and I can tell he wants to be rougher, faster, but he’s holding back, as if he could scare me now.
“March,” I breathe, rocking my hips against him when I’m seated fully on his length. I wrap my arms around his neck, curling a single hand around his whole ear. “Don’t be afraid to hurt me.”
“I’ll always be afraid I’ll hurt you,” he replies and it’s only then I realize his fingers have sharpened to claws under his pleasure.
“Don’t forget I have claws, too,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’m immortal. I’m durable. Don’t hold back for my sake.”
“I don’t want to be a monster for you.” The words are strangled, as if he’s fighting his very nature to say them.
“You’re not,” I reassure him. “Even when you’re at your most monstrous, you’ll never be a monster to me.” I lift myself and slide back down his length, sending pleasure through my body until I shiver. He groans with the movements, his claws pressing just a little harder into my skin, never breaking it.
“Pretty Lily,” he groans, leaning his forehead against mine. His ears twitch as if he hears something, but I don’t focus on it. I only focus on him. “The things I want to do to you—”
“Then do them,” I order, rocking my hips again. “If you don’t move, I will, March.”
His form flashes but I don’t flinch away from the brief image of the chimera skull. A mask, that’s all it is, and it’s part of March, as sure as the thin stretch marks along my lower body are part of mine. Some things even Neverland refuses to heal.
With a growl, March gives in, his claws digging into my hips and holding me still. I open my mouth to complain, to growl back at him, but before I can, he starts to power inside me with hard, fast strokes. I cry out, throwing my head back at the feeling of him stretching me, claiming me, splitting me apart and sewing me back together.
His lips press against the column of my throat, nipping, soothing, before doing the same thing to my breasts. His arms hold me stationary so all I can do is hold on to his shoulders, one of my hands snaking up to latch around the base of his ear roughly.
It only makes him slam inside me harder.
“I know your heart isn’t all mine, Pretty Lily,” he snarls against my skin. “But I claim part of it for my own.” His breaths pant around his words, almost making them sound garbled to the point of being bestial, but I understand him just fine. I can’t answer him though, my cries coming faster, the pleasure spreading through me until it’s all I can focus on. “You’ve had me since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Don’t,” I manage to rasp, because feelings are dangerous in Neverland, but he snarls at me and wrenches my head forward, my eyes popping open at the sudden movements. When we lock eyes, my legs begin to shake with another orgasm, but I don’t look away even as I pant around the feelings quivering through my body. He doesn’t stop his thrusting, doesn’t slow his pace, sending me right into another wave.
“I will love whoever I please, Chieftess,” he spits, and though the words almost seem like a threat, I know what he means. Even if I never love him, even if I send him away, he’d still choose to give me his heart. The March Hare doesn’t believe in half-truths. He’s either absolute or he’s not.
It’s a testament to his strength when he stands, still fucking me, and drops me on a table littered with someone’s important papers. They go flying as March slams inside me with the new angle, hitting the sweet spot inside that has me scrambling for something to hold onto.
“Even if you won’t have me,” he snarls, biting my jawline a little roughly before soothing it with his tongue. “I’m yours.”
Fierce as a Tiger Lily (Daughters of Neverland Book 2) Page 13
