I paid for the makeup, Dolly bouncing behind me in excitement. “You see all this, Alice?” she said to her bodiless doll as she held it up to the register. “All these pretties are for us. We’re going to be the two prettiest girls in all of Wonderland.”
My lip twitched as she took the bag from the cashier and turned my way. “Can we go back to the room? I really want to try all of this on.”
“Sure thing, darlin’.”
Just before we left, the cashier asked, “Where’s the cosplay event being held?” I stared at the woman blankly. Dolly did the same. The cashier pointed at the bag. “What will you be wearing all that makeup for?”
Dolly smiled. “For the killing . . .” She looked to me, confusion on her face. “Who’s next, Rabbit? I cannot remember.” She blinked, all big blue eyes and pink lips. I could still envisage the red blood staining her neck and cheeks. I had to stop from growling out loud at the thoughts those images evoked.
“The Cheshire Cat.”
Dolly’s eyes glittered, and she turned back to the cashier. “For when we kill the Cheshire Cat.” She held up the bag. “Now I will look my absolute best!”
Dolly turned, and I saw the cashier try to make sense of what Dolly had said. Non-killers, I thought. So fucking boring, living their mundane little lives.
“Rabbit!” Dolly called from the doorway. I turned to see her arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently on the floor. “We’re going to be late!” A cheeky smile formed behind her pursed lips, and her dimples caved in her cheeks. “Tick tock.” I couldn’t fight back a laugh as I walked toward her, shaking my head as she stole my lines. “Silly Rabbit,” she whispered when I joined her. I tapped her leg with the top of my cane, the mildest of punishment.
Then we went back to the hotel, so my darlin’ could paint herself into a doll.
I watched her from the bed as she sat at the tired, old vanity across the room, putting on all the makeup she had bought. I sharpened the blade in my cane, never taking my eyes from her reflection as she painted her eyelids blue, coated her lashes in black. As her pale skin became porcelain with some liquid she brushed over every inch of her face. Her cheeks were pink and, of course, her lips were bright pink.
She hummed and sang along to her boombox as her tape played the familiar songs. Her shoulders shook as she danced on her seat, her long blond curls bouncing with the movement. And all the time I watched her, I grew hard. As she transformed into a living, breathing doll before me, I became so hard that my teeth gritted together.
I had always envisioned her this way. At my side. Fully made up like a doll. Sharing in my ways. Killing. Stopping hearts. Not giving one fuck about anyone else but one another.
I slipped my blade back into the shaft of my cane, just as Dolly attached something to her lashes. When I stood, she turned.
I was still. Rooted to the fucking spot. Big, long lashes had been placed on her eyes, and the bottom ones were styled into sections, making her look precisely like a doll. Only the fact that she breathed and blinked made me aware that she was alive.
“Darlin’ . . .” I hushed out, my throat close to sealing shut.
She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, then lifted her arms out and curtsied. She looked up at me through her fake lashes. “Well? Am I more your little Dolly now, Rabbit?”
I nodded without blinking. Without fucking breathing. I was too hot under my shirt, vest and cravat. “Yeah,” I rasped, running my teeth so hard over my lip that blood trickled into my mouth.
It only served to make me harder.
Dolly’s face changed from her usual smile to a serious expression, hunger in her gaze. “I did it for you, Rabbit,” she whispered and stepped closer to me. My heart slammed in my chest with every step she took.
The closer she came, the more I smelled roses. She had bought the perfume she had always worn as a child, the one that originally belonged to her mother. She stopped right before me. Her hand reached out, and my every muscle froze. My nose flared as I thought she might touch me. I felt the usual sickness that rose whenever someone tried to lay a hand on me. On skin tarnished by the deeply invasive touch of men who had no fucking place touching it. The men who pushed inside me, filling me with their filth.
But then she touched my cravat, pulling it from my vest and running it through her fingers. She looked up at me, and I was breathless at the sight of her beautiful face. At her makeup. At my Alice in Wonderland brought to life, standing before me. “I want to look good for you, Rabbit. But only for you.” She batted her eyelashes three times. “Do I look pretty, Rabbit? Am I beautiful for you?”
“Yes,” I confirmed in a rough voice. Dolly began to wrap the length of my cravat around her hand, just like she was wrapping me around her little finger. She always had. “Am I your pretty pretty champion? Am I your painted champion of Wonderland?” Dolly leaned around me, looking at my back as if she could see through the clothes I wore. “Like the picture on your back?”
“More than her.” I freed my unsteady hand to stroke a strand of her long hair between my fingers. It was so soft. Dolly sucked in a breath.
“This Dolly . . .” She lowered her eyes, and I hardened further as I saw her notice my want for her. Every part of me ached to take hold of her and possess her, smother her and drown her in my flesh. She whimpered. The very cells of my skin were dominoes of coldness. I staggered back, a sheen of icy sweat covering my face.
“Rabbit,” Dolly whispered. Her bottom lip began to quiver. Blushing, she lifted her hands to her breasts and cupped them in her palms. “I keep feeling all these sensations . . .” She shook her head and began walking toward the bed . . . toward me. As I watched her, she became my prey once again. Darkness stirred within me. I stared at her neck with its racing pulse. I wondered what it would look like if I sliced open one of her veins with the tip of my thimble and let the blood pour. Not a main vein, but one where I could watch the vivid red render her pale skin into a sadistic artist’s masterpiece. I imagined lapping at the blood. Then in turn, her opening a vein in my neck and feeding from me just the same.
Joining in more than just the physical. In every way.
My legs hit the bed at the vision and I slammed my hand over my cock. My eyes rolled back as my head hit the pillow.
“Rabbit,” she called. I heard the desperation in her voice. I heard the hitch of her breath. When my eyes opened, I saw her opposite me, at the bottom of the bed. Her back rested against the railing at the foot of the bed. Her legs were open, and her hand was underneath her dress.
“Dolly.” I stroked along the length of my dick over my pants.
“I want to touch you, Rabbit,” she said as the heel of her boot scraped at the comforter. “I want to feel your hand do this to me. I want you to make me feel the shivers that break out inside of me when I simply think of your face. I want to feel you above me.” A whimper fell from her lips. “Little Dolly wants her Rabbit.”
“Dolly darlin’,” I growled as I shifted my back against the headrest. We were face to face, just a few feet between us. And then her hand came to the top of her dress. Never taking her eyes from mine, she began unthreading the lace that kept the bodice of her dress together, exposing her white skin inch by inch . . .
Until the material parted at her waist and the two sides opened, baring her breasts. White breasts that would fit neatly into the palms of my hands. Hard pink nipples, almost as pink as the lipstick that graced her lips, begging for my mouth.
“There’s nothing like it, Dapper Dan,” Chapel had told me one night when I had asked him about women. “Their taste, their feel, their breasts in your palms . . .” He’d nodded. “You’ll get this with your little dolly darlin’. One day, when the dam that keeps your abusers’ touch living within you breaks, you’ll both get it from the other . . . and there’ll be nothing quite like it ever again. Synergy, Dapper Dan. Complete synergy.”
But that dam had not broken . . . yet.
So I watched from a
distance. I watched as Dolly closed her legs and pulled down her panties. The frilly white panties I had bought her came sliding down her legs. I snarled as her slim, pale legs parted again, wide and bent at the knee, heels digging into the white comforter beneath us. Then her fingers were moving to the hem of her dress. My gaze flitted between the blue satin that was now shifting up her thighs and her eyes as they remained locked on me. Her lips were pursed and her pupils were blown.
“Rabbit,” she whispered as she lifted her dress to her waist. I swallowed, still looking at her face, until I had no other choice but to look down. A groan clawed from my chest at the sight of her exposed pussy, the blond hair enticing me in.
“Dolly,” I growled. She lowered her hand and ran her fingertips over herself. Her eyes rolled back as she moved her fingers back and forth. Slowly. Painfully fucking slowly.
I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take any more, couldn’t take my cock being trapped behind my pants. Ripping open the button, then the zipper, I reached inside my pants and pulled out my dick. My hand wrapped around its thick length and I jerked it back and forth. I hissed as I saw Dolly’s hand freeze. She watched me. She never took her eyes off me as I kneeled up on the bed. I let go of my cock just long enough to pull off my shirt and vest. Bare-chested, pants wide open, I inched closer to where she lay. I stopped only a foot from her. Stopped close enough to watch her eyes glaze over as her fingers entered her hole, and to hear her cry softly and whisper, “Wider, bitch.”
Every fucking part of me turned to solid granite as I heard the cry, the echo of Ellis’s past pouring from her lips. “You’re so fucking tight, tiny bitch.” She was being pulled back from our Wonderland into the Earnshaw estate. Into the years void of me. Void of my protection.
A surge of fury swept through me watching my Dolly come apart, so broken from what those cunts had done. What they’d done when I had been locked in their prison. Her lips trembled as her eyes filled with tears. “You like that, don’t you, baby whore? You like me filling you? You fucking love it.”
I threw my head back and screamed as a tear fell down her newly made-up cheek. When I lowered my head to face her, her big blue eyes were lost . . . alone. She was lonely. Lost in the hopeless isolation of her past.
Her fingers continued to trace down. With my shaking hand, I slid my palm along my still-hard cock and hushed out, “Take it, boy . . .” I swallowed, pumping my dick, and let forth the words I heard whenever I closed my eyes, whenever I tried to sleep . . . whenever I took a motherfucking breath. “Take it, boy. You were meant for this. You are mine. This ass is mine.”
Dolly cried, her tears flowing freely down her cheeks, slipping down her bare firm breasts. “Look at this smooth, pretty skin,” she said.
“Look at this pretty back,” I said in return.
“You’re so fucking tight, baby whore.”
“You’re so fucking tight, little boy.”
“You clutch me so damn tight.”
“You love this. Lap it up.”
“Faster, little girl.”
“Faster, little boy.”
Breaths were faster. Hands worked harder. Tears fell from our eyes.
“I’m gonna come, little girl.”
“I’m gonna come, little boy.”
Dolly broke apart, her ass lifting off the comforter as her back arched and her head fell back to rest on the top of the railing of the bed. Her hand circled her pussy faster until her body jerked. The sight alone caused me to stiffen and then burst apart. I fell forward, my hand slamming onto the railing beside Dolly’s head. I groaned as I came and came, my cum lashing Dolly’s pussy, dripping down onto the bed.
My hand shook on the railing, sweat coating my forehead as I stared down at Dolly. Her huge blue eyes were staring up at me, makeup smudged from all of her tears. “Darlin’ . . .” I said, my voice gritty from exertion. From my fucking tears.
“You too?” she asked, and for a moment I wasn’t speaking to Dolly. It was Ellis. I was speaking to my girl, my best friend; my need for her had endured what we had been through.
“Me too,” I replied, seeing both pain and relief in her eyes. Pain for what I went through at the hands of those bastards. And relief. Relief that she wasn’t the only one. That someone else knew her pain.
Just like she knew mine.
Yet it was my biggest failure. I’d left her alone. I’d let those fuckers hurt her—the King of Hearts and his men.
We never took our gazes off one another as we caught our breath. Then, needing to feel something but the remembered touch of the one who hurt me most, I took my free hand and brought it to hover over her cheek. Dolly swallowed, and then, after a gentle nod of her head, I forced myself to touch the skin of her cheek. I gritted my teeth; she held her breath.
Her skin was so soft. “Darlin . . .” I whispered and suddenly felt water on my finger. I looked into her eyes and saw a tear had fallen. But a smile had formed on her mouth.
She had liked it.
So had I.
When I lifted my hand, the tear was still on my finger. With Dolly’s attention still on me, I sucked the tear into my mouth. It tasted of her.
I swallowed it down. Seconds passed by, and then a wider grin spread on Dolly’s mouth. She shook her head. “Silly Rabbit.”
The residual ice in my veins melted in an instant.
Taking that same finger, I ran it down her cheek again, more than curious at how it felt. “Get bathed and ready for bed,” I ordered. Dolly’s eyes closed under my touch.
“Okay, Rabbit.” She moved off the bed and into the bathroom.
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling until she came out. I thought about the next kill. Thought about the next “uncle” we would defeat. The one who had kept me under his thumb. The one who had come for me and come in me night after night. The one who had dared call me his “little boy.” The one who always smiled. Smiled at me, like him sticking his dick in me was all that I wanted in life.
Uncle Clive. The Cheshire Cat. The Four of Hearts.
The bathroom door opened and Dolly stepped out, freshly washed and wearing her white nightgown. Like this, she looked so young. She was beautiful either way.
Dolly walked to her side of the bed, and I pulled back the comforter like I had done for her every night. She climbed in, and I drew the comforter back over her, keeping her warm. Just as I went to lie on my back, like I did every night, Dolly asked, “Do you think . . . if it is at all possible . . . you could put your arm around me as I sleep?”
My eyes widened in the dim glow of the lamp beside the bed. Without turning, without moving, Dolly said, “Like you once held me as I slept.” She paused. “I do not think I have ever slept as well as I did then . . . I . . . I loved it, Rabbit.”
I ran my hand through my hair, then, rolling to my side, threaded my arm under hers on top of the covers. I breathed deeply at the discomfort the action brought, but also at the familiarity it delivered too.
No one but Dolly could ever do this for me.
Dolly sighed. “Do you remember the film we would watch as children, Rabbit?” I stilled. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?”
I searched my memory to pinpoint the one she was talking about. She insisted I watch a movie with her every night. “Films” she called them, using one of the British words that her “mummy” had instilled in her vocabulary.
“The one with the song ‘Truly Scrumptious.’ The doll that sang. I never really understood what the song was about. But when I would hear it, I would always think it was about a doll who wanted to be free, always spinning and spinning but never being able to move from her music box. Stuck. I always felt sad as nobody ever helped her. So she stayed trapped there forever.” I closed my eyes at the sad tone of her voice. Dolly was always happy. Never sad. I fucking hated the sound of her being sad. I suddenly felt something on my hand that made me go stock still. It was her finger. Her fingertip, softly circling the back of my hand wrapped over her waist. She laughed onc
e, but the laugh was sad too. “You used to say I was the doll on the box, because of her makeup.” A pause. “But now I think I’m like her in different ways.”
I got what she was saying. She was trapped like the doll appeared to be. Trapped in her room of doors, and no one came to let her out. All she wanted was to be saved. To be free.
“She . . . the doll . . . I always felt like she wanted to be kissed too. Felt she wanted to be loved. I think she wanted her true love to return from wherever he was to save her.” Her finger stopped moving on my hand, then I felt her fingers wrap around mine and grip me tightly. “She was under a spell, and only her love’s first kiss could set her free.” My jaw clenched as she spoke. I knew she was telling me what her life was like when I left. How she’d waited for me to return.
She was the doll. Her words right now had nothing to do with the damn movie.
I’d taken too fucking long to return. The damage had already been done.
Then she started singing. In her soft, gentle voice, she started singing that song. The one sung by the woman dressed as a doll in the movie . . . and it fucking shattered my black heart. Her hand gripped mine tighter and tighter as she sang each line. And I heard all the pain. Heard it all come pouring from her mouth through that damn song. My vision blurred, and I blinked when I felt my cheeks get wet. I lifted my hand to my face and felt tears.
I hadn’t cried in eleven years. The last time was when I’d been taken from Dolly. And now, when I’d gotten her back . . . but gotten her back in pieces, with her heart now made of fragile glass.
Dolly finished her song, and the room was plunged into silence. I held her tightly, and then even tighter as her sleepy voice said, “One day we will kiss, Rabbit. One day we will kiss, and then this adventure will be so impossibly perfect . . .”
It wasn’t long before Dolly’s breath evened out.
But I didn’t sleep. With every hour that passed I replayed the image of her splayed in front of me, those words pouring from her lips. Words her fucked-up “uncles,” one in particular, had spoken to her as he raped her as a kid. I thought of her innocent voice singing that song. I mulled over what she wanted, what she had wanted for too long.