Wicked Wonderland

  Anxiety raced with desire for him. She told herself to get a grip. “I can’t discuss anything right now. I have too little time. I still have my hair and makeup to do, and I have to get my flute and drive down there.”

  For a moment, her mind played with the fantasy of letting the two of them pick her up, take her away from all her troubles forever. But what would that mean? Abandoning her mother? Breaking up the relationship between the two of them that was obviously so special? Living in the Fae Realm, where everything would surely be completely alien to her, maybe even frightening?

  “We need to talk now.” His dark tone made her shiver, made her blood pump hard and heavy in her veins.

  “Leave it, Nick. Let’s get her to her ballet.” The kindness in Kris’s voice contrasted with Nick’s dominance and authority. “I wish we could come and hear you play, Lilly, but you know…Christmas Eve, Santa’s sons. We’ve got a lot to help Dad with.”

  His words almost broke the tension between her and Nick. She turned away from Nick’s intense gaze.

  “Thanks, Kris. I understand.”

  Kris stepped out of the sleigh, then reached for her hand. She took it and let him guide her down to the sidewalk outside the home she shared with her mother. Turning back to face Nick, she tried to explain her haste. “This ballet is important to me, Nick.”

  His expression darkened like a thundercloud. “It’s not the goddamn Nutcracker Suite I have a problem with, and you know it. I just want you to know you don’t have to go back to that strip club, and Kris and I—”

  She cut over him. “I have to go now.” She put her hand on Nick’s and gave it a quick squeeze. “Really, thank you both so much for this amazing, incredible night. I’ll never forget either of you.”

  She turned away from them, tears in her eyes, her heart aching to be with them. This was like ripping off a Band-Aid. It was better to end it now. Better before she got in any deeper. The sooner she accepted that, the better. She needed to get back into work mode and concentrate on tonight’s orchestral performance, concentrate on Tchaikovsky, concentrate on the music. All her life, music had helped keep heartache at bay.

  As she reached down to pick up her handbag, Nick’s fingers skimmed her jaw, and her heart did a long, slow somersault and slammed up against her ribs. He slid a hand through her hair as he angled his head toward hers. “Good-bye for now, Lilly.”

  The kiss Nick gave her started out gentle and then went deeper. Even after all the lovemaking, the rush of feelings that geysered up through her heart and mind stunned her. He eased gently back. Questions filled his eyes, and Kris gazed at her with puzzlement and yearning too.

  The other reason, the most important reason she didn’t get into relationships, lay on her tongue. But she wouldn’t say it. She was so tired of trying to explain it and having no one fully understand.

  Nick could tell from the guarded look in her eyes that there was more Lilly wasn’t saying. It suddenly occurred to him what wasn’t being said.

  “So, about this stalker. You think we’re just going to let you walk out of our lives when we know you’re in some kind of danger?”

  She looked down at her feet. “I don’t know if I’m in danger. This has been going on since I was a little girl, and I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m still alive. He hasn’t killed or seriously injured me. Really.” She yanked on her wool coat. “It’s not something you should worry about.”

  “I don’t understand how you can just keep blowing this off. You act like all sorts of horrible things are nothing, are okay with you, like you deserve to be treated like dirt or something. It makes me angry.”

  He watched her eyes go from wary to devastated, and then she was blinking hard, blinking back real tears.

  Shock gripped him for a second. He never knew how to handle a woman’s tears. Nick turned to Kris, who put his arms around Lilly. Awkwardly, he gathered the two of them close in his own arms.

  “Shh, babe.” He stroked her hair. “Who the hell is this bastard, and what has he done to you?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the most frustrating thing. I just don’t know. He’s some sicko who wants to control someone’s life. He gets off on scaring me, I guess. And insulting me. I don’t even want to tell people the messages he leaves for me because they’re just embarrassing. It’s always stuff about me being trash or a whore or something.” She gave an ironic snort. “I guess after you’ve both seen me working in a strip club, those insults might not seem too far off the mark to you?”

  Kris gripped her shoulder and turned her to face him. “Nick and I don’t think that way. You know that.”

  “It’s a horrible, continuous invasion of my privacy. It never stops hurting, and I never feel safe.”

  Everything within Nick froze. He could only stare down at her as her silent tears dampened the sleeve of his shirt. Then the ice broke, replaced by a violent, raw fury. He struggled to keep calm. Shame suffused him as he realized how much anger he’d been expressing toward her reluctance to have a relationship. He’d been acting like a beast, and here she was so hurt, so vulnerable.

  She shifted in his arms and stepped back, then wiped viciously at the tears on her face as though to eradicate even the memory of them. “I’m sure that sounds pathetic.”

  Nick took her hand. “Not at all. I’m sure any human being would be hurt and scared by something like that. No, look at me,” he insisted when she dropped her gaze. “You need to remember that you can turn to us any time, that Kris and I would do anything to protect you. Remember you have us on speed dial.”

  Lilly managed to give him a shaky smile. “Thanks. I really have to go now. I can’t be late.”

  Nick stopped himself from protesting, even though the desire to call her back and crush her to his chest was a painful, clawing need inside him. Why had he forgotten to be careful? Forgotten that she needed time, patience and care? He’d rushed her into lovemaking, ménage lovemaking, which wasn’t even normal practice for a human. He’d selfishly tried to force a three-way union when she wasn’t ready. And he’d obviously frightened her with the intensity of his need and desire. He’d very nearly frightened himself with the depth of his own feelings.

  Lilly wiped the tears from her eyes, afraid they might freeze on her cheeks in the cold, now that she was no longer in the heated sleigh.

  She turned to give them one last look. Kris was blowing her kisses, and that made her smile and blow some back. Nick just stared at her. Surely she imagined tears in his eyes.

  She didn’t look back a second time. Her boots sank in the snow as she strode toward her home.

  She fished her keys out of her bag, and they clanged together like musical notes. Lilly didn’t fancy her nosy neighbor, Mrs. Ward, noticing what hour she was getting home, so she snuck around the side of the townhouse.

  A note written on yellow paper was taped to the window near the back door.

  Sweetheart, there’s a big Christmas Eve party at the casino, and so many of my friends are going I couldn’t resist. Don’t be mad. I promise I won’t spend too much. You know me. I just love to hang around the roulette table. I’ll mostly just watch.

  Love you

  Mom

  Irritation simmered into cold rage.

  Christmas Eve, but she’s not out shopping. She’s at the fucking casino.

  It wasn’t as if she were some little girl who needed her mother to see her at every music recital, but her mother had promised to come see The Nutcracker Suite. The fact that she’d forgotten again wasn’t really any big surprise, but the fact it was Christmas Eve just pissed Lilly off that little bit more than usual. The time when her mother had taken a keen and proud interest in her flute-playing daughter seemed a very, very long time ago.

  Everything Nick and Kris had said about her situation flooded into her mind. She rarely let herself feel anger toward her mother. She’d been furious with Nick for pointing out her mother’s faults, but maybe it was time to stop burying her head in the sand and fac
e them.

  Hell! She smacked her keys against her side.

  So much of what Kris and Nick said about Mom was true.

  At least those things were true about her ever since her mother had become friends with Doreen Barrie.

  Casual sex or not, the contact she’d had with Kris and Nick had changed her. They’d touched her, somehow, somewhere deep inside her soul. The desire to shrug off her mother’s problems and live her own life had never been so strong. The desire to see Nick and Kris again was powerful too, no matter how she wanted to fight it to protect herself from hurt.

  Taking a deep breath, she reached for the door handle.

  As soon as she touched it, she knew something was wrong, something more than her own anger at her mother. Her heart began to thud, the answering echo a dull beat in her head. She jammed the key in the lock and then realized she didn’t need to as the door slid open a crack. The door was already unlocked. A cold chill shot through her as she gently nudged it open.

  Had her mother been drunk and gone out and left the door open?

  And if someone uninvited has been in this house, why the hell hasn’t the alarm been triggered?

  She pushed the door all the way open and stared around. Bile rose in her throat, and her blood turned to ice in her veins.

  It looked as though a pack of wild baboons had jumped on every surface, smashing anything breakable and tearing every fabric. The side door on townhouse led into the kitchen. Smashed crockery lay on every surface, puddles of milk lay on the floor, and food was smeared on the walls.

  Who are you, and why, why, why won’t you leave me alone?

  For a moment, she thought she would vomit. The chilled, numb feeling left her to be replaced by fury. Rage fueled her every step as she picked her way through the mess in the kitchen and headed for the lounge. She would kill whoever did this to her mother’s townhouse. She would flay them, rip them limb from limb. Even as the thoughts crossed her mind, another part of her sneered at herself. She wasn’t about to kill anyone. Helplessness warred with fury. There was nothing she could do, no way to get revenge against this nameless, ruthless, remorseless enemy.

  Her study was in a worse state. Papers were strewn everywhere, and some of her music books had pages ripped out.

  Across her computer screen in dark red lipstick someone had written TRASHWHORE! And on the wall DUMPSTER GIRL YOU’LL NEVER BE ANYTHING!

  Tears stung her eyes, and her breathing came in sharp gasps.

  Pottery once given to her mother and father as a wedding gift now crunched beneath her feet.

  A new thought entered her mind, and anger and helplessness turned to horror.

  Oh God, my flutes!

  She ran to her bedroom, ignoring the torn sheets and ripped clothes, and threw open her closet. Much to her relief, both of her favorite Western Concert flutes still sat on the top shelf, seemingly unharmed.

  She pulled them down and pressed the French silver of them to her cheek, the metal cool against her face. Then she dropped to the floor and cradled them in her arms like babies, finally giving way to tears. She could almost laugh at herself, worrying about her flutes above all else. But what little insurance she and her mother had wasn’t going to cover half of this mess. A sob burst from her throat.

  Crunch.

  The sound of pottery being stepped on made the air freeze in her lungs. She scanned the floor quickly and picked up a jagged piece of pottery that might make a serviceable weapon, then put it in her pocket. She hid one of her flutes in her coat and reluctantly left the other on the floor as she moved to stand.

  Before she got to her feet, she heard another crunch. She startled and looked up to see Sonya Sanford towering over her. Her mouth went dry. For a moment, Lilly thought of the pure evil of the equally Amazonian White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Sonya invoked power and terror, with her impressive height, her athletic body, her strange amber eyes and thin, mean lips.

  Before Lilly could think, Sonya pulled a knife. Not an ordinary metal knife but one made of black flint. A chilly breath of horror shot through her veins.

  “Don’t scream, trashwhore, or I’ll kill you.” Sonya paused, a slow, evil smile creeping over her lips like poison dripping off the tip of a blade. “Stand up, dumbass.”

  Lilly struggled to her feet. She nodded as her terror increased. For a moment, she felt like a small animal mesmerized by a swaying cobra. Then her mind cleared, and she slipped her hand in her pocket and gripped the pottery shard.

  Lilly pointed the tip of the knife directly at her chest. “Give me the bracelet with the Blue Spirit Stone.”

  “The what?” Oh God! I have no clue what this crazy bitch is talking about.

  “Don’t pretend to be even stupider than you are, slut—give me the bracelet with the stone as blue as a robin’s egg! It was never intended for scum like you.”

  Lilly looked down at her arm, but she’d already realized she wasn’t wearing the heavy piece of jewelry. Nick had taken it off for her when she’d been about to get in the bath.

  “You mean my turquoise bracelet, the one Nick gave me? I must have left it behind in his…car.”

  Sonya grabbed Lilly’s arm and held the knife to her throat. “Don’t fucking lie to me!”

  “I’m not!” Lilly’s nerves jangled like something shaken in a tin can. Nothing Sonya said made sense. Somehow, she needed to get a grip and clear her mind. She shook with conflicting emotions, wanting to kill Sonya, wanting to run away, fearing Sonya and burning with blistering rage at what Sonya had done to her home.

  Sonya seized Lilly’s hair and wrenched her head around with shocking strength. The pain blinded her, but Lilly gripped the pottery shard in her pocket. Maybe she only needed to distract Sonya for a moment, and then she could run. With a cry, she jammed the shard into Sonya’s thigh. Sonya gasped and dropped the knife, but she didn’t let go of Lilly’s hair.

  Lilly squirmed, trying to break free, but the pain of her hair ripping from her scalp made her eyes water. If she could only get a hold of the knife on the floor.

  Sonya continued to pull on her hair and twist her arm. “Well, well.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper now, and it was obvious the tall woman was in some pain from her bleeding thigh. “So it turns out you do have a bit of spine after all. Too little, too late, bitch.”

  Sonya reached for something in her own pocket, and before Lilly had time to think, something sharp pressed against her neck once again. Something small, something else sharp, not the knife—a needle or the point of a magic wand?

  The prick was fast. Lilly gave a sharp kick backward, but her limbs grew heavy, little black specks danced before her eyes, her vision narrowed…then darkened until nothing remained.

  Nick stretched on the daybed. Strangely, he’d dreamed of the ballet. He’d never seen The Nutcracker Suite, but he knew the children’s story. He shook his head to clear it of the images of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. In his dream, the Mouse King had left the stage and the dancing. The giant mouse had climbed down into the orchestra pit. He’d smiled, baring a mouth full of sharp, vicious-looking teeth and had seemed about to attack the members of the orchestra with teeth and claws.

  Nick ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed. It seemed a childish dream for a grown man to have.

  Shrugging, he sat up in bed. On reflection, he guessed he could put the dream down to guilt over not going to hear Lilly play for the ballet. Guilt and worry. He was definitely worried about this stalker she’d talked of. He needed to know more about the man and what he did. No matter how much Lilly downplayed what she was going through with the stalker or how much she brushed him off, he wasn’t going to let it slide. They’d let her out of their lives once and left her vulnerable to harm, and he wasn’t going to do it again.

  If only there was some way to protect her and be there for her all the time. Today, he’d had to work and she’d had to work. He stretched, stood up and began to pace. There wasn’t any way to protect a w
oman like that all the time. She wanted to be independent. He wondered how strenuously she’d object if he hired her a security guard. A laugh caught in his throat. He was sure she’d be outraged. She was too stubborn by half.

  Nick breathed in deep. A delicious scent of cinnamon, coffee and bacon filled the chateau. All the sex had made him ravenous, and whether it came down to conjuring or cooking in a mortal kitchen, there was no better cook than Kris. Judging by the mix of yummy smells, Kris planned a rather elaborate breakfast.

  Returning to their chateau in Long Island for a much-needed rest had been bittersweet without Lilly. He and Kris had planned to journey back to the Fae Realm once all the presents were delivered, but right now, that was the last thing Nick felt like doing.

  He sat down again on the day bed and eyed the row of books on the shelf nearby, but he’d read almost all of them. Breathing in the scent of Kris’s cooking, his mind drifted back to the last time he’d been in the Fae Realm.

  I really don’t even belong there.

  He’d seen so many wonders in the Magic Lands: battles between the dark fae and the Warriors of the Light, fantastical beasts, dragons, djinni, jeweled forests and palaces made of snow and ice, but now he felt he could trade it all for a lifetime with the two people he loved most in the world.

  He had mixed emotions whenever he returned to the Fae Realm. There, he could use his wings to fly around at will without fearing a mortal might see him, but expanding them still hurt. He could make love to full-blooded sylphs, and some of the more powerful sylphs could take the form of any beautiful woman or man he chose. But these were illusions. Only sex with Kris fulfilled him, not sex with air sprites. And yet he craved the kind of ménage relationships the sylphs enjoyed, and he craved the depth Lilly had to her personality, and her feminine touch.

  Full sylphs were shallow, but they coolly sensed his every need. They came to cheer him up with sex when he was down. Last time he’d visited the Fae Realm, a young air sprite named Carling wouldn’t leave him alone. She sensed his loneliness and felt compelled to ease it. Carling was visual perfection. She had honey-colored hair, and most days she was draped in pink gauze that barely covered her slim, athletic body. When he sat at his desk trying to compose emails to mortal friends, she would appear in his lap and fling her arms around him, pressing her breasts against his chest. Arousal would be thick in his lungs, but he would push her off. She was puzzled but not offended. She knew Breena, their regular girlfriend in the Fae Realm, wouldn’t be jealous. Kris wouldn’t be jealous either. But Nick was sick of the easygoing nature of the sylph fae when it came to emotions, when it came to possessing a lover.