I tapped my trembling finger, my heart racing.“Yes, I understand.”
It wasn’t just them I would look in the eye though, it was my Hatter too. I could finally see his face. See who he was, the color of his eyes. I could see the madness living within him. I could see everything.
My heart began to pound in my chest, my hands curling into fists. It felt like my stomach had suddenly filled with a thousand butterflies, all of them made of lightning, their wings fluttering at a speed I couldn’t comprehend.
It felt good and bad at the same time. Almost like what that orgasm felt like but on a lesser level.
“Come on,” Azrael sang, that lilt in his voice ever present, “make your Hatter proud.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my breathing pick up in a way that wasn’t wholly unfamiliar at this point. I flexed my hands at my sides. Nobody would see this. He wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t fixed the cameras. This would be our secret for right now. Our secret until he told me I could do it at the church, and when I did it there, I wanted to do it without hesitation. I didn’t want to show the weakness they had forced down my throat. I wanted to be a true Queen of Hearts. Someone worthy of having captured the attention of someone like Azrael.
I counted three Mississippi’s, inhaled deeply and lifted my chin, knowing exactly where his eyes were. I always knew. I always felt them. Just open them. Quickly. Even if it’s just for a second, just a moment. This isn’t disobedience, this was me pleasing him. Me doing what he wanted because Iwantedto. I wanted to do this, I was choosing this. I was choosing me.
My eyes tore open, locking with his.
I froze, everything in me burning up with a fire I didn’t quite understand.
He was beautiful.
His eyes were ocean blue. Like the torrential waves of an angry sea. Light blues and dark blues and little flecks of white, and I saweverythinginside of them. I saw our Hysteric Wonderland. I saw my Hatter. I saw fire and ice and that lilt come to life.
I felt him swallow me up whole without remorse.
He stared back at me, unblinking, his eyes shifting into something I didn’t recognize, but of course I didn’t recognize it, I had only everheardemotions, I had never seen them before, not like this. It was almost as if he were daring me to look away. As if he were trying to put cold rage into his eyes to make me fear him, but how could I ever fear him? He was Azrael and he was beautiful.
Everything about him was sharp and soft. Like a feather covered in thorns. He was young too and tall, so tall that I had to angle my head up slightly to look into his eyes.
I didn’t know how young he was, but there were no wrinkles around his eyes, there was no age in his voice or hands when I had seen them. He couldn’t have been anywhere near as old as the Leaders in the church. I was sure he wasn’t even as old as Thomas was.
“Eyes worthy of a Queen,” he said, breaking the spell.
My eyes fell to his lips, but it was too late, they had already closed. His lips were beautiful. His face was clean, darker than mine, I think I heard someone call it tan once. The sun liked him.
He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.
“That’s my good little sinner,” he hummed, and I found my lips threatening to part again, my heart skipping a beat as I watched his lips move. I found that my lips only did that during the moments when I couldn’t remember how to breathe. As if I suddenly needed more oxygen.
Oh, I could certainly watch them forever.
“Would you like your present now?”
I liked the way they curved around each word. He made love to each and every single one as they left his lips. Each of them precise and picked for a reason. He spoke so eloquently, so harmoniously. A calculated dark song.
“Scarlett.”
My lips did part at that. I couldn’t stop them, not when I saw my name leave his lips. The way his tongue slid and flicked, the soft yet caressed sound of each syllable, causing that thing between my legs, the thing that ached so terribly, to flutter. It was breathtaking.
“Eyes.”
My eyes lifted to his and I straightened, not realizing that I had been leaning towards him.
I felt heat rise to my cheeks as I straightened, only to pause when I noticed a change in his eyes.
His pupils had grown. Really big, it looked like. His eyes looked like a lunar eclipse now, just exactly like the one I had seen in one of my other books. When darkness fell over the world, blocking out the moon, God was punishing the nonbelievers for all of the sins they had committed by taking away the thing that controlled the tides. A warning.
My head tilted ever so slightly, my eyes furrowing. Was he sick?
“Yours have widened too,” he told me and then stepped to one side of the table. “It happens for many reasons,” he explained, pulling the gift to the edge of the table. “Fear, recognition, and most often, lust.”
