Clasping my hands behind my back, I followed the ladies at a sedate pace, studying them both. Elle was pale and exotically beautiful: long dark-blue hair, eyes so electric blue they seemed to create their own light, and skin that glimmered with mother-of-pearl undertones. Even dressed in the ridiculous combat boots, leather jacket, and cocktail dress as she was, she commanded attention from all.
But Alice was no shrinking violet. Where Elle was light, she was dark and just as exotic. Alice wasn’t originally from Wonderland. She’d come from another realm entirely, smuggled in for her unearthly beauty and sold to the highest bidder by a marauding band of pirates who’d profited most generously for it. She’d been trained in the arts of seduction, and the student had eventually exceeded the master.
Alice didn’t remember her other life, and my research into her true origins hadn’t dug up much. Who she’d been born to, and what she might have been groomed to have one day become had been lost to time immemorial. But Alice was content with her lot. She was a freed woman who did as she pleased, “And that,” as she’d said, “is worth more than all the gold and jewels in the all the worlds.”
Her steps closely matched Elle’s, and every so often she’d intentionally brush up against Elle, her breast casually grazing Elle’s forearm. I knew Alice well enough to know she was putting out subtle cues that she was willing to enter into a liaison if the siren was also willing.
I clenched my jaw and swallowed hard. They would make a lovely pair—none could deny it.
Stopping at the end of a long hall, Alice pointed to a closed door. “Through there. You’ll find all you’ll need.”
Elle dipped her chin and opened the door, and immediately, the scent of roses punched me square in the nose as she walked inside. This was Alice’s personal changing room.
I made to follow and glanced at Alice, who was still standing there, a faraway look in her eyes.
I frowned. “Aren’t you joining us?”
Blue eyes cut to mine. “What? To watch you both change? I’ve better things to do with my time. Besides, she does not wish for me to be there. And I do not go where I am not wanted.”
Glancing into the verdant garden thick with freshly imported long-stemmed white roses and many other floral varieties, I searched for Elle’s familiar blue hair, but she was lost in the thick maze. “You don’t know that.”
Alice was the epitome of culture and refinement, so when she gave a snorting type of scoff, I noticed. Her hand was on her hip. “I do know that, and the fact that you can’t see what’s so clearly obvious to me in just a matter of minutes worries me exceedingly.”
“See what?”
She smiled gently and patted my cheek. “My dear one, you were never knowingly blind with me.”
I frowned, brows gathering into a tight V . “If you are perhaps alluding to there being something between my partner and me, you are sorely mistaken. We work together. Who Elle chooses to sleep with is none of my concern.” My words were steady, confident, but my hands clenched into tight fists by my sides.
She inhaled deeply and glanced down at my now relaxed hands. Her full lips thinned. “As you say, Hatter.” She looked as though she meant to leave but gave her head a slight shake and grimaced before saying, “Does she know? Who you really are? What you are?”
A slight tick in my cheek muscle betrayed my inner turmoil as I glanced left and right to make certain we were truly alone. “She knows about Mariposa, if that’s what you’re implying.”
She shrugged. “I figured she would. She’s a smart one, that siren. But you know that’s not what I meant.”
I could play dumb, but she and I both knew it would be disingenuous. I knew what she was asking. Elle had seen a few aspects of my otherworldly nature, the darker part of me I worked like the twin hells to keep hidden.
Licking my front teeth, I adjusted my cravat with fingers that suddenly felt numb and cold. “I don’t see any reason why that needs to come up. As I said, we only have a working relationship. I was thoroughly vetted before becoming a Grimm detective. I’ve been as honest as could be, but who I really am is no one’s concern, least of all my partner’s.”
“You keep telling yourself that if it helps, Maddox. But if you should decide for more with her, be honest. It helps. Not just anyone could accept what you really are.”
I heard what she wasn’t saying. It wasn’t just Mariposa’s end that had spelled doom for our relationship. Most days, I kept a tight leash on my emotions. But when my only child had died, a part of me had died with her, and that part, for a time, had been control of the darkness. Alice had seen the very worst of me. I did not blame her for walking away then, and I did not blame her now.
I chuckled darkly. “Alice, while I appreciate your kindness with me, I must assure you that in this you are wrong. Elle and I do not work as a pair outside of Grimm duties. I may have briefly entertained the idea of there being more. Once. And I vow to you that had there been, I would have told her all first. But there is not, and I do my partner a service by my silence. You know that I do.” I thinned my lips and nodded hard once, the subject closed so far as I was concerned.
She shrugged, dropped her hand, and took a small step back. “Then I guess there’s no more to say.” Her eyes suddenly sparkled as she shoved the wardrobe bag into my chest. “Hope you like what I’ve chosen. Though knowing you as I once did, I figured you’d be game for a little role play.”
Narrowing my eyes, I stared down at the bag in my hands. “What did you pick out for me?”
She laughed airily. “You’ll see soon enough, my darling.” Then she kissed the tips of her fingers and brushed past me, gliding as though she walked on air back into the den of sexual delights that awaited her.
With a coughing grunt and a curious heart, I slipped through the open door. It slid gently shut behind me. The world was a living garden that burst with neon-blue butterflies gliding lazily through the twilit skies. Everything smelled of the finest imported flowers from all corners of the hundred realms: the lush scent of jasmine, the heady fragrance of roses, the gentle lushness of honeysuckle, and so many others.
But beneath it all, I smelled Elle—water and darkness. I’d learned her scent long ago. It was in me now, and I knew that no matter what, I would always find her.
CHAPTER 22
DETECTIVE ELLE
I HEARD the snapping of a twig before I felt the presence of another person.
Turning on my six-inch black-leather thigh-high heels, I saw Hatter walk toward me like a feral, loping predator.
My heart rate quickened. I would say it was the flowers. Everyone knew the flowers of Wonderland drove everyone mad. But though the garden dripped with their rich verdant scents, those were not native Landian blooms.
He watched me unflinchingly as he drew nearer to me, his dark eyes looking almost black in the moon’s heavy glow.
“I love the strange madness of this land,” I admitted, as though in a trance.
He stopped walking at the sound of my unwitting confession. I hadn’t meant to say that, but my pulse had been beating so fast in my throat as he’d drawn closer to me.
I never had to tell Maddox where I was or where I was going. Yet somehow, he always found me.
He grinned, and the play of shadow and moonlight along the sharp lines of his face made him appear devilish. I pressed a hand to my stomach.
It was rare that Maddox and I ever found time to be truly alone together. We were always busy, rushing from one scene to another, or if we were at our office, there was a constant stream of chaos just outside our open door. Maddox had never come to my eternal waters again, and I never went to his apartment.
I thought the madness of him, the way his nearness had infected me like venom during our very first case together, had waned in me. But I saw now that it wasn’t true at all.
If anything, I was more aware of him.
“You didn’t always,” he said in that thick drawl that had me feeling suddenly weak in t
he knees.
I’d been aware of Alice’s cues earlier as we walked toward the dressing room but hadn’t felt much. But all Maddox had to do was look at me with dark secrets shading his eyes, and I felt wildness stir through my blood. That ancient siren’s magick had only ever gripped me once before—with Hook.
I shuddered as I thought about my dead lover, and that finally gave me impetus enough to break away from Maddox’s hypnotic lure. I turned my back to him and stared into the vanity that sat in the middle of the expansive gardens. Bulbs glowed a soft golden hue on the mirrored frame.
There was nothing sitting upon the desk save for a velvet-lined black mask with threads of swirling gold upon it, an opened can of glittering golden paint, and a small, dainty black riding crop.
There’d also been a pair of ridiculously high heels that I now wore. I’d had to buckle the damned things—they were leather and lace and buckles and stupid. How would I be expected to fight—if it came to that—in something like this?
Still, I had to stick to the theme, and the outfit certainly did that.
I touched the tip of the paint jar. “I suppose I am meant to paint myself?”
Suddenly, I felt the overwhelming wave of his presence cover me, and when I glanced up, Maddox stood right behind me, so close I felt the brush of his heat pressing against my own.
His multihued eyes burned with a lick of orange flame right at their center. Only once had I seen Maddox burn with fire that he’d created. My pulse kicked into overdrive as I recalled just how primal, how… animalistic he’d been then.
Rather than putting me off, it had called to me, enticed me, hypnotized me. Sometimes I thought that maybe I’d dreamt it, but then I saw him like this, shaded by madness and moonlight, looking like some demon that had crawled straight out of the twin hells, and I thought that maybe my partner was so much more than what I could ever imagine.
He reached around me, took the jar of paint into his large hand, and said in that deep, whiskey-drawl of his, “This is not for you.”
I frowned and turned, almost immediately regretting my decision to do so, because he was so big and overwhelming, and… and… my fingers twitched as I felt the first stirrings of my dark hunger slink and slither through my veins like an unfurling snake.
As if sensing my turmoil, Maddox took three giant steps back, still holding tight to the pot of gold paint. “I know what Alice has planned for me. She always teased that one day she’d get me to play dress-up with her. She’s now gotten her way.”
I quivered and clutched at my stomach, feeling like an untried virgin. I didn’t know what in the hells my partner did to me whenever we came to Wonderland, but somehow I always felt like a wreck around him when we were here.
“Hatter,” I breathed, not pausing to think through my words, “your magick is strongest in Wonderland, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure, Elle,” he whispered darkly then tipped his chin toward the mask. “But you should get dressed. We still have to try to find this bloody place.”
He faded into the bushes, leaving me alone. I turned and stared at my face in the mirror. I looked pale, my skin too purple beneath my eyes, my lips a dull red. My hair looked fine, though—maybe just needed a little smoothing out to tame the cowlicks.
Alice was right. Midas was a vain man and didn’t want to just be beautiful—he wanted to be surrounded by nothing but beauty.
For all his vanity, though, I actually had a soft spot for the golden king. He was fiercely intelligent and had a ribald sense of humor that appealed to me greatly.
My hands shook a little as I shrugged off my leather jacket. Though I preferred my combat boots and black leather, Midas would not.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t wear the garment Alice had laid out for me, either. The dress the faeries had made me was nonnegotiable—that was, if I actually wanted to breathe. And though I appreciated the gesture of wearing nothing but glittering rope between my arse cheeks, I simply couldn’t. The outfit certainly would have made Midas notice me, though. She’d been right about that. Breasts out and arse covered with nothing but floss.
I remembered Midas from my years at my father’s court. An old man even then, he should have long since given up the ghost, yet rumor had it that Midas’s heart was unlike any other. His heart, it was said, was as immortal as the gold he loved so well, keeping him locked in an age that was neither too young nor too old.
Midas had always liked my looks, but then I was a siren and appealed to pretty much anything that had a pulse. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make myself look even better than I naturally did.
It had been a long time since I’d bothered to try, but tonight, I would try, because I was going to be the brightest pearl at that gala. I was going to make Midas want me close.
I opened a drawer and rummaged around for makeup, knowing Alice had to have some around. Sure enough, I struck gold. She had several cases’ worth of quality rouges, color pots, lip dyes, and so on.
I’d never been much for the styles of my court, which had been decidedly elaborate and ostentatious, but any female of marrying age was required to know at least the basics of beautification.
My eldest sister, Andrina, had been the best of the seven of us at applying hers and had taught me several of her tricks, one of which was that I didn’t need to have a steady hand when applying eye paint. I could just smudge the edges to give myself a smoky-eye quality. If I was going to wear a mask, there was no sense in getting more elaborate than that. Most of it would be covered, anyway.
I grabbed the silk mask and held it up to my face, checking to see how much of my eyes would show, then made sure to apply the richest application of deep-hued indigo powder to those sections. I also added silver glitter at the edges. With my naturally blue eyes, the color combination gave me an otherworldly quality.
Once I was satisfied with the edges, I quickly tied on the mask. Once it was in place, I applied long false eyelashes that had golden phoenix feathers laced throughout.
I blinked and wiggled my eyes. The falsies held fine. I looked like an electric peacock, which was just what I’d been going for.
I took a pot of pale-pink rouge and gently applied a little. I didn’t want to look like a hooker. I did want to look like a high-class harlot, though. Midas definitely had a type.
The pale-opal quality of my skin played nicely with my color palette. All that was left was the lip stain. I found one called Sugared Berries, not quite pink or purple but somewhere in between the two.
I quickly applied it and held my mouth open until it dried. The stain smelled of the berries it was named after. Cocking my head, I glanced at myself in the mirror and was startled to see a woman I’d not seen in ages. The last time I’d bothered to paint myself had been when I was still the apple of my court. Father had hated me, but everyone else had loved me—or at the very least, fawned at my feet.
Snarling, I wanted to wipe the damned paint off and just go as I was.
“You ready?” Maddox’s deep voice rolled through my body like a heated wave, caressing my insides, drawing me in.
My breath scissored out of me as I opened my eyes and stared at him, rendered speechless by his transformation.
Hatter’s style was always impeccable, but I’d never seen him like this before. He had on trousers that molded so perfectly to him they almost seemed like a second skin. His chest, arms, and face were coated in gold paint so thick you could not make out any of the tattoos on him. It gave him an alien, otherworldly beauty. Whenever he breathed, he shone like fire. But that wasn’t how he’d looked when he’d burned like an inferno months earlier. This fire was molten gold, and my pulse skittered loudly in my ears.
His dark hair was slicked back, and he wore a black crown that wasn’t dull but gleamed like a polished onyx stone.
He watched me watch him, and I could have sworn that his pupils were large black pools threatening to drown me in them. I clenched my jaw.
“You look— ”
“Ridiculous,” he said with a roll of his eyes, and I snapped my mouth shut, because that hadn’t been the word that had come to my mind.
“Did you get your back?” I asked him.
“I’m fine,” he said with a nod, “but I could use help with this.” He turned his palm over, and in his hand was a men’s black silk collared tie with a large Victorian broach on it. Chipped diamonds framed the black gem at its center.
I blinked, feeling unsettled. My stomach was squeezing in on itself. He smirked at me. His look said he knew I wouldn’t do it. I narrowed my eyes, and steeling my nerve, I snatched the damned tie off his palm.
Devilish brows lifted, but a cocky grin stole across his handsome golden face. I looked him up and down. Even with my newfound six inches, Maddox was still taller than me.
“Kneel,” I commanded, voice ringing out with just a hint of the siren’s command in it.
I wasn’t hypnotizing him to obey, but I was challenging him right back.
“As my partner commands,” he drawled as he smoothly knelt beside me.
He made a very pretty sight on his knees. Big and strong male that he was, submitting to me, it was empowering in its own right. I’d never failed to appreciate the S&M subculture, but I had to say, I liked it even more right now.
I took one step to the side so that I stood right behind him and spread my thighs. That way, I framed his body within the V of my legs. He rested his muscular back against me. His flesh was hot and silky to the touch.
I glanced at my thighs, noting that the paint hadn’t transferred from him to me. Of course Alice would only have the best on hand. I wet my lips, lowered the collar, and wrapped it around his strong, corded neck. I felt his warm inhalation wash across my wrist, and I couldn’t help but shiver.
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