The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(55)

I’d seen his lean, strong form so many times, and yet it was like looking at him for the first time all over again.

Muscled, but not overly so. Slightly furred on his chest and legs. The perfect specimen of a man.

His gaze was hot and raking as he stared me up and down, possession gleaming in his eyes. I should feel shy at the look burning through him, but I knew that Hatter had always seen me as so much better than I was.

He didn’t see the short legs. Or the tiny bulge in my lower stomach. The not quite perfectly shaped breasts or the arms lacking the type of muscle tone I wished to have.

“My goddess,” he breathed. “Alice, you’re perfect.”

And this time when I cried, the tears were not of sorrow but of joy. The light of Wonderland’s magic glowed through my pores, and with each movement that brought me closer and closer to him still, the very soil beneath my feet began to stir with life.

The very moment that I fell into his arms, Hatter too began to glow. I touched his devilish brows, and a lock of his black hair, in awe of the mad creature I’d tamed so long ago.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I always have. And I always will.”

He nodded. “And I you, my dark rose.”

There were no more words after that. Hatter lifted me high into his arms, and before I knew it, the vines that’d lazily been creeping up my calves were now thick cords of ropes creating a canopy and bed for us.

Gently, reverently, he laid us down, covering my smaller body with his much larger one, framing me in his arms and looking at me as though he’d never seen me before.

Then with a groan of reverence and need, he covered my mouth with his. I tasted his mint and licked at the sherry tinge of his tongue. Flame poured down my throat and made my body sing.

That golden wash of magic began to pour out of us both, into the ivy, into the soul, the trees. The plants. The animals.

Our love was transforming our world.

Grabbing my breast, he covered my nipple with his hot, hot mouth, and I cried out, undulating my hips beneath him. Another powerful wave of magic sank into the realm.

Lost in a haze of delirium, I clawed at the back of his neck as he suckled at my breasts. First one, then the other, leaving a wet trail of kisses behind.

The music in the air converged with the perfume of flowers all around.

Hatter nuzzled my throat with his nose before lazily laving my flesh with kisses. Wherever he could touch me, he did, planting row upon row of love all over me.

He was thick and hard, and I was so, so ready. Bumping my hip into that perfect bit of male flesh, I nudged him toward the very heart of me.

Hissing, he stared down at me with lust-glazed eyes full of starlight. “You ready?” he said in a drawl only I would ever hear or had ever known.

Because this was the look of man in love. And I was his heart. I always had been.

“I’ve always been ready for you, my Hatter.”

With one powerful thrust, he entered me and I keened, feeling like I would come crawling out of my skin from the unbelievable pleasure of it all. I dug my nails into his back and scored his flesh, maybe even drawing blood. But I’d never been a gentle lover. Hatter and I existed in a different plane of reality when we came together in love.

We were lust, love, and pleasure in its very purest and raw form.

The darkness of oblivion encroached as he thrust deep, deep, deeper inside me. I wrapped my legs around his hips, urging him to slip in even farther, wanting everything I could get from him. Wanting to give him all of me.

My eyes were closed now, but I could see the radiance of our power glowing from behind my eyelids. We were a nova about to burst.

“I can’t”—he grunted—“can’t hang on much—”

“Come! Come, Hatter, come!” I cried out before I lost myself completely and tumbled over the cliff of sexual oblivion.

“Alice!” he roared.

And only then was I able to open my eyes. Even as my own pleasure still tore violently through me, I watched my mate sink into his own little death.

I’d always loved to watch him come. Loved to see the veins in his neck go rigid, to see his face flush with a rush of blood, to see his brows and forehead dot with sweat and how he’d bite down on his back teeth, sounding in pain, even as I knew he was in the ultimate thralls of pleasure.

And because I had my eyes open, I saw the rebirth of our world happen right before my very eyes. A powerful wave of golden power ripped out of us, shooting like a wave in all directions, slicing through the trees and turning them instantly into a chaos of colors. The leaves turned from green to fiery flames of bronze.

The birds winging through the sky above shifted, instantly becoming things of unnatural beauty and wonder. The flowers in the gardens beside us took deep, gasping breaths of joy and then began to sing, adding their voices to the music still playing all around.

“Alice and Hatter!” they cried. “You are back. You have returned!”

That power flowed like water through every crack and crevice of Wonderland, and though I could not physically see it all, I felt it move through my very soul.

Hatter looked at me and I at him. There was such joy in his eyes that it brought tears to my own. “We did it, Alice. Together,” he said, sounding elated and stunned.

And I could only laugh, because I was too overcome to do much else. I no longer brimmed over with so much magic, but I felt a seed of it stir through my soul, and above me I felt Hatter’s power bloom too.