Rabbit made me warm.
He was the only thing that ever did.
I didn’t like this side of Rabbit. He made my heart hurt.
Fighting the tears in my eyes, I took out my lipstick, pulled down the mirror in my visor and began to draw. I circled my lips, and then pulled the lipstick down at the corners.
I sat back and studied my reflection.
Dolly now had a sad face.
I didn’t know if Rabbit saw. He didn’t say anything as we drove along the empty roads. No cars passed us as we chased the sun across the sky. I hugged Alice to my chest, sniffing back my sadness when it became too much for me to take.
As more and more time passed, with Rabbit still not looking my way, I took my blade from the teapot-shaped white purse Rabbit had bought for me. “We’re the Sick Fux,” I whispered, practicing for the kill. “You, the Cheshire Cat, will never smile again . . .” My lip hooked at the corner, proud of what I had said. Suddenly, Rabbit yanked the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes. I was flung forward, my blade slipping from my hands and landing beside my boots.
“He’s mine,” Rabbit growled, his hands gripping the wheel so tightly I feared it would break.
“W-what?” I whispered, feeling my heart pound as Rabbit’s tattooed neck corded and bulged with venomous veins.
My eyebrows pulled down, and a fire flared in my stomach. I turned, Rabbit’s face only an inch from mine. Gritting my teeth, I met his eyes and said, “I am the champion of Wonderland. Charged with destroying the bad men.” I narrowed my gaze. “The Cheshire Cat is mine.”
A sound like a groan mixed with a vicious snarl poured from Rabbit’s mouth, and I saw his lip flick up at the corner. He shifted in his seat. When I looked down, the bulge in his trousers was back. But he was harder than ever before. The shape of his shaft was visible through his black pants. Rabbit shook his head slowly. He tutted at me. “My sweet little Dolly,” he said quietly . . . menacingly . . . lovingly. “You just tread carefully, pushing me this way.” He raised his left hand, and I felt the tip of the long, sharp-nailed thimble creep up my neck, along my vein. The vein he liked to lick when I was asleep.
The tip of the thimble traveled up my neck and over my chin until it reached my mouth. Rabbit’s eyes flared as he concentrated on my lipstick, a frame to the frown that now curved my bright pink lips. His head tipped to the side, and his eyes followed the path of the lipstick. He sucked in a quick breath. “You will do as I command, little Dolly. I am the White Rabbit. I lead you . . .” His head straightened. “I control you in Wonderland.”
I was breathless, my eyes fluttering slowly to a close, as if his words, his commands, were a string on my heart. Plucking and pulling, holding me in its grip. His thimble traveled downward as his heavy breath played across my face. It traveled down until it ran over the swell of my breasts. Dancing with the top of my corseted blue dress, back and forth . . . back and forth . . .
“You will obey, darlin’,” he ordered curtly, and I shifted on my seat. I cupped myself between my legs and arched toward him; a magnet, a pull of need as my moan traveled into the balmy air. A bird up above caught it and it rode away on its feathered back. I rocked forward and back as Rabbit’s thimble held me in its thrall. “Today, you will stand back and watch.”
“Yes,” I said, breathlessly, passively.
“Today, you will watch your master at work.”
“Yes . . .” My fingers moved faster.
Tingling. Heat. Pressure . . . so much pressure . . . building . . . building . . . building . . .
“Today you will watch me. You will watch the killer you belong to. You will watch as he takes back what he lost to the Cheshire Cat.” He leaned forward, and my mouth parted as a crest, a high wave, began to surge through my body.
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Today,” Rabbit whispered directly into my ear, moving forward until I felt the smoothness of his cravat slip against the tops of my breasts. “Today you will watch your master shred a man. You will watch me stab and cut and bathe in his tarnished blood . . . over and over and over and . . .”
“Yes!” I screamed, my legs parting as I was swept away by bliss, a heat so intense I was incinerated, only to return to a pile of pathetic bones and skin and flesh. “Yes . . .” I slumped against the seat. “Yes . . . Rabbit . . . yes . . .”