The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(77)

The flood of emotions she’d bottled away for years burst forth. She loved him, and she could no longer pretend it wasn’t so.

She sighed, body warm and alive and filled with a desperate need to go to him—the arrogant, brutish jerk who didn’t remember her. But she’d make him remember. No matter what. And in the process, she’d make him forget her great-grandmother. Alice was not her, and she’d make him see that.

She flattened a hand on her nervous belly. Somewhere in this crazy house, he existed. “Three days to make him love me?” She glanced up and Danika nodded. “I want to break the curse.”

Danika’s smile was radiant.

“But I can’t stay, fairy. You have to understand. I can’t just bail out on my family. I have to go back. At least for a little while.”

Danika inhaled. “If it is meant to be, it will all work out in the end, Alice. You just wait and see. Trust in this, in him, make him love you, make him see you, and it will work itself out.”

A cold chill nipped at Alice’s nose. She shivered, startled to notice Danika beginning to turn amorphous. She hovered like a ghost surrounded by light.

“Love him, Alice. Only love him,” the ephemeral ball of light whispered before disappearing in a sun-fire burst.

Alice hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking, staring at the door as if she’d divine an answer from it.

Three days.

She stood up, and before she could second-guess her decision, she went to the door, turned the knob, and stepped out into the hall. Empty portraits stared back at her. Vines, not there before, crawled like green fingers through cracks, covering the wall in a living canvas. She walked; as she slid her hand along the wall, a trail of tiny purple flowers blossomed under her touch.

It’d only been a short walk from the living room earlier, but now she found herself walking through a maze of twists and turns.

“Hatter,” she called quietly, afraid to speak too loudly, afraid she’d lose her nerve.

“Alice.” That deep voice, like a fiery caress, made her gasp and turn.

He leaned against a wall. The jacket he’d worn earlier was gone now. A white shirt, top three buttons undone, tapered to his body, outlining taut curves and giving her a tantalizing peek of tanned male flesh.

She licked her lips. I am woman, hear me roar, became a thunderous backdrop to the wild beating of her frantic heart.

“I... I wanted to...” She cleared her throat, realizing she was still staring at a sliver of his nude flesh. Her fingers clenched.

He smiled with a wicked gleam in his eyes. He knew. She lifted her chin. So she found him attractive. She didn’t care if he knew. Three days, three days to stop being mousy, shy Alice. Three days.

“I wanted to see you. I missed you.”

He shoved off the wall and gave her a smile with no heat. “I’m assuming you’ve finished your cozy tête-à-tête with a certain fairy?” Disgust laced his words.

“How did you...” Then the lightbulb came on, literally, a ball of silver light flashing above her head. Talk about weird. For a second she wondered where clichés had originated and if, perhaps, they’d come from a place like this. A place where words had power.

Of course he’d know. She wasn’t his first. Alice buried her nails in her palms.

A moon, heavy and round, materialized, flooding the hall—which now looked more like a garden than a hallway—with light. A gentle breeze, redolent with the sweet smell of fresh grass and rich earth, surrounded her.

She looked around in awe. “What is this, Hatter?”

He was silent so long she didn’t think he’d answer. “It’s me, Alice. It’s my magic, my moods. I create all this”—he tapped his head—“with just a thought.”

She wanted to tell him she knew that, that she’d wanted to know what the place was and if it held any significant meaning to him, but words failed her. Suddenly she wasn’t standing before him in boy shorts and a cami but a frilly blue dress with thigh-high striped stockings and large, chunky heels.

She planted hands on her hips, fighting a smile, and tapped her foot instead.

He grinned. “Though I find I prefer you like this.”

For a second, she thought she’d be naked. But she was once again wearing her boy shorts and cami. His look, his voice, it did something to her. Curls of heat spread between her legs, tightened her belly, made her nipples tight. He was so beautiful. Like a gothic devil with his shaggy dark hair and sensual lips that promised wicked delights..

“Are you searching for me, Alice?” The teasing glint fled, and his voice went empty and hollow again. Almost like he didn’t want to have fun with her, didn’t want to be easygoing.

She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

His hard gaze was steady. Such a short distance between them—it would take nothing to close the gap.

She’d had boyfriends in her life. Losers. Winners. None of them made her feel what she felt in that moment. Heat. Fire. Longing so profound she wondered if it were possible to die from it.

She wondered how her great-grandmother had acted. Alice could only picture her as she was now—hunched over, an old, old woman well past her prime. How had her great-grandmother seduced him?

Because she wanted to be just the opposite. Alice never wanted him to see her grandmother again.