Wonderland Ch. 06

The ride to the pizza parlor off in Wonderland's historical district took only a couple minutes, the time made longer by her teasing smell and sharp nails, as well as her legs pressed hard and firm against his. By the time he parked the bike, he was positive that unless he cooled down, there would be no walking anywhere for the next couple minutes.

"Kitten," he muttered, gently caressing the fingers still clenching his shirt within their grasp, wincing when they dug in deeper. "Kitten, we're here."

Tempest slowly released his shirt and he rubbed the spots where her nails had got him before looking over his shoulder at her. She handed back the helmet and straightened her hair, swallowing hard.

"Why can't you have a car like a normal person?!" she demanded, her voice going from calm to pissed in an instant. She swung off and faced him with her hands planted on her curvy hips, jutting them to the side.

That was not helping his erection by any means.

Thatcher stood, watching her face flush when he reached full height. "I have a car," he admitted as he tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. Her flush deepened and she scowled when he smiled knowingly down at her. "I just like my crotch rocket more," he tagged on.

Tempest gave an unladylike snort and rolled her eyes. "Well, itt looks like a bunch of Lego's glued together," she scoffed, adjusting her bag on her shoulder.

Thatcher flicked the tip of her nose gently, laughing when she gasped in mock-indignation. Turning towards the parlor, he heard her grumble under her breath before she arrived at his side.

Inside the pizza parlor it was cool and dark, faintly reminiscent of a bar. The hostess showed them to a booth where they dumped their bags before heading to the buffet.

Thatcher watched as Tempest piled on the pizza, surprise filtering through him as he realized that another girl would've freaked out over her wet hair and makeup-less face. But Tempest hadn't even brought it up.

They walked back to the booth and ate in comfortable silence. In the ten minutes Tempest had devoured her first plate, he had been working up the nerve to ask her to hang out with him. It wasn't that he was afraid she'd say no -- he was after all her ride -- but he was more afraid of what being alone with her would do to him.

Thatcher was quickly starting to regret his decision to send his small team ahead without him, especially Bayothet. Her metallic tone and humorless manner would've been the perfect remedy for the one part of him that had a hard time playing dead.

Just as he opened his mouth to pose the question, Tempest leaned back and belched.

Thatcher blinked in surprise. "I give that a seven out of ten."

Tempest, who had turned scarlet the second she realized what happened, now shot him a dry look, her green eyes sparkling with both embarrassment and squelched laughter. "It's the soda," she admonished, pushing the offending empty cup away from her.

"Uh huh," Thatcher chuckled, reaching for his full glass.

Realization dawned on her face and she rapidly shook her head. "Please tell me we're not succumbing to a burp war in the middle of a restaurant," she said quickly, her eyes wide as she watched him chug down the glass with a slightly perturbed look on his face.

Thatcher didn't stop drinking his Dr. P until there was none left. He set down the glass and leaned back, waiting patiently.

"Oh -- here one comes," he warned her a few seconds later, winking as her face resumed its scarlet shade once again. Soon, the rapid uncomfortable feeling in his belly rapidly bubbled up from his esophagus and he...hiccupped?

Tempest snorted and cracked up laughing, smacking her hand softly on the table. "All that buildup and no delivery?" she cackled, clutching her belly. "I give that a negative four."

Thatcher grumbled, rubbing his stomach. "I feel gross," he muttered, the feeling of being too full grabbing hold of him. Tempest chuckled and picked up her plate.

"You don't mind if I keep eating do you?" she asked, already scooting out of the booth.

"Where in the hell do you put all of that?" he asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it. His face turned as pink as hers, a fact that had them both chuckling in self-deprecation.

"What goes in..." Tempest began.

He waved her on, shaking his head. "I get it, Exlax, thanks for the reminder."

Vaguely, he was aware of a stifled gasp, but when he looked up at Tempest again she was already heading towards the buffet.

Shaking his head and writing it off as nothing more than a Tempest-ism, he pulled out his cheap disposable phone and pressed the end key until the plastic lit up. All he had missed was a single text message from Bayothet.

TRACKER DESTROYED. ANCIENT = TZE'SIC. STILL IN ROUTE FOR Q.M. ORDERS?

Thatcher felt his throat seize up, his intake of air coming out strangled.

The dead Raspan didn't surprise him. The tracker had run out of his usefulness the moment he had been caught.

But the Gargoyle...could he really be...?

Thatcher quickly composed a new message, reading it over a few times to make sure it made cohesive sense. Snapping the phone closed and shoving it back into his coat pocket, he let his eyes wander to Tempest.

"My...my friend just left without saying anything..."

No Gargoyle would consider anything weaker as "friends." Unlike other species, Gargoyles believed they were the elite. With whole-hearted enthusiasm, they believed it. In their minds they were meant to lead those who could not lead themselves, and that composed of anyone who could not defeat them in a challenge. As a warring, dominating people, no one honestly could. While Thatcher could not say the Gargoyles hadn't been a great asset with their technology and politics, he also could not say that the Gargoyles hadn't been a menace. The Great Battle had been the result of centuries of growing aggression and after one shove too many, well...the tension proved greater than peace.

Tempest had not been a friend that goes without saying. That simply just wasn't part of the Gargoyle belief system.

Thatcher shook his head slightly to himself as he stood up to get more Dr. Pepper, his eyes catching Tempest's as he walked. He gave her a crooked smile and watched as more slowly than usual she smiled back.

Thatcher shoved his cup under the ice machine, his mind whirring.

Perhaps he was looking at this wrong? What if Tempest was, as she was inferring, a real friend of the Gargoyle? Tze'sic had been notorious in his youth for playing dalliances, but none of the rumored affairs had been much more than that, rumors. Some of them had also been politically motivated. Like the human Queen Elizabeth the First, he had never tied himself to another entity, refusing to hand over power once his role as a clan leader had broadened. His reported romances had been to tie clans or make deals. No children or happy mates had come of anything Tze'sic had done.

Thatcher watched Tempest make her way back to the booth, his eyes falling to the strange contusions on her skin where her long neck met her shoulder. Contusions he had apparently missed yesterday.

An icy hand gripped his chest as realization hit him like a freight train. To say he had been looking at the situation wrong was a definite fucking understatement.

Those lesions, those cuts, were fang marks. That scent he had smelled outside her house, the powerful magic that had led both his trackers here to this city, all connected in that gut-wrenching moment.

Tempest was not a friend of Tze'sic.

She was his mate.

+++++

When Thatcher sat back down at the booth, I felt like I had been sucker punched in the stomach. The angry and accusing look on his face was yet another extreme of his personality that was beginning to give me whiplash.

Thatcher was quite literally as volatile as Talon.

That thought sent me sucking in my breath tightly and I lowered my eyes from Thatcher's so he wouldn't see the pain. I know it was stupid. Talon had left, without warning, and had made up a bunch of lies during his stay. Why, I had no clue. I was happy when he hadn't decided to kill me that day at the lake, being his mate had just seemed so...

I smothered a sigh and picked up a slice of pizza, faintly aware of that tiny voice in the back of my head that was saying I was eating my feelings.

After swallowing a bite, I worked up the courage to ask Thatcher what was wrong, though I didn't meet his eyes as I did so.

Surprisingly, he chuckled.

Meeting his eyes, I saw that while the anger was still there, it was being rapidly replaced with concern. It was almost like Thatcher knew exactly what I was thinking.

"Would you like to go see a movie after this?" he asked, leaning forward so his elbows were on the table. "I'll pay for the tickets if you buy the popcorn."

I eyed my plate warily at the sound of more food. "After this you'll probably have to roll me into the theater," I admitted, smiling when he broke out into soft laughter. The anger in his face was almost completely gone now.

"I'll manage," he promised. "What about the new movie with Sean Bean?"

I blinked. "The historical horror movie? About the plague?"

He nodded.

I smirked. That sounded like the type of movie he would be into.

Realizing what my smile implicated, Thatcher bit his bottom lip, recanting. "Or there is the pirate movie..." he offered with a telltale cringe, sounding less than interested.

I rolled my eyes. "My mom dragged me to the midnight showing the night it released. I'll spare you the gory details, but I'd rather watch Europeans being savaged by a disease than go through that experience again."

Thatcher blinked. "You are one bloodthirsty woman, Tempest Cohen."

"You should see me when I'm angry," I warned, rolling my eyes in mockery of myself as I dug into my bag for my wallet.

Thatcher gently tugged on my ponytail as he passed by me, having moved out of his seat the moment he realized what I was searching for. "I'm paying, Kitten," he teased, his voice just a touch huskier than it had been three seconds ago.

He winked and kept walking to the counter, his shoulders blocking the tiny black girl working the register completely from view as he pulled out his own wallet from his back pocket.

Once Thatcher had paid, I left a small tip before we grabbed our gear and left.

Since the movie theater was just around the corner, the drive didn't take long. The line wasn't bad either, considering it was a weekday. But when we got into the concession line, it was like a switch had been thrown somewhere and everyone began to flood into the place. Preteens galore filled the space and I had to fight from rolling my eyes.

"Is another vampire movie out or something?" I asked Thatcher as we walked towards our screen located at the far end of the theater.

Thatcher shrugged with a snort. "You know, I don't really understand the fascination everyone has with them. They aren't even real."

I shrugged as he used his shoulder to push open the theater door for me and walked through into the cool darkness. "I do," I admitted, following after him. "It's because they aren't real that I feel there lays the fascination. Humans always want what they can't have, even if science explains they couldn't possibly exist."

"Even if they're sparkly undead things?" Thatcher deadpanned.

I eyed him over my shoulder with a smile. "Especially if they're sparkly undead things."

Thatcher rolled his eyes. "Figures," he muttered as he took a seat beside me.

As we settled in for the wait, Thatcher suddenly looked around as though guilty and pulled a suspicious white packet from his inner pocket before tearing the top off with his teeth.

"What are you doing?" I whispered.

With dramatic gusto he began to shake the packet over the popcorn, and I watched as an orange powder began to liberally cover the buttery golden kernels. I eyed Thatcher and snorted.

The orange powder was cheese.

"You carry around cheese packets on a regular basis, huh?" I asked him as he used our straws to stir the cheese and kernels around in the large plastic bucket.

"Uh huh."

"You are one weird dude, Thatcher," I muttered, watching him as he stirred.

A minute later, Thatcher returned my cheesy straw back to me with a wink. "I should be pissed," I told him as I cleaned it off with a napkin.

"Uh huh. So, question." He cleaned off his straw with his tongue, his large black eyes watching the previews as they began to play. "So you understand the fascination with sparkly undead bloodsuckers. But what about the other monsters? What do you think about them?"

I eyed him questionably. "Are we having a philosophical debate on things that aren't real?"

"Uh huh," he said with a nod, looking over at me before stabbing his straw through his drink lid. I huffed and looked back at the screen.

"Well..." I began, trailing off as I didn't know how to begin. "What do you mean?" I asked, looking back over at him.

"For instance," he began to clarify, "the halfers. You know, half human and half whatever else. The ones who can't turn into beautiful, well-paid actors."

Half human, half something else? An image of Talon popped up in my head with his hair out of its braid and his hands resting on my bare hips as he pushed the covers down my legs. I could almost feel his warm body pressed hard against mine as we kissed. A ghost of his voice whispered his pledge of love of a forever kind deeply against the shell of my ear, drowning out all else.

"Uh, Tempest?"

Blinking back the memory, I avoided Thatcher's gaze and shook my head. "You have a vendetta against Edward Cullen," I teased, watching out of the corner of my eye as Thatcher scrunched up his nose slightly.

"I do not!" he admonished, flicking my nose gently, laughing when I flicked his forehead back. His bruising and nose tape may be gone, but I wasn't going to chance it. "Answer my question, Kitten," he chuckled, swatting my hand when I reached for the popcorn.

I sighed and gave Thatcher a brooding look. "There aren't a lot of movies about halfers," I noted. "I mean, honestly, I wasn't attracted to the centaurs in those Narnia movies. Or Hellboy, for that matter."

"Ron Perlman is one ugly son of a bitch," Thatcher snorted as the lights dimmed and the commercials began to roll. "So you get no fault for that."

I tried to fight a smile as I said, "I always had a thing for Voldemort, though. Who knew slit noses could be such a turn-on?"

The noise of absolute disgust that filled the movie theater caused more than one head to turn and had me almost dying with laughter. Thatcher swatted me, though I noticed he was trying hard not to laugh too.

"You have a screw loose," he hissed at me, tossing a kernel at my head before turning back to the movie, chuckling every once in a while.

With a smile I settled back into the comfy theater seat, watching as Europe became scourged by the disease of the rats and a God-fearing knight came to sheriff a lone village hidden from it all.

The movie wasn't long, and we ended up getting out of the theater just before sundown. Already the breeze was cool and I shivered in my thin tank and exercise shorts, embarrassed all over again at how I was dressed. Thatcher put his jacket around me, rolling his eyes when I touched the leather in mock-awe.

"I can be a gentleman," he told me firmly as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "You thirsty or anything?" he asked as to further prove his point when we began to walk through the parking lot together.

Teeth chattering I shook my head and internally groaned as we got to the bike, knowing that I would have to live through high-speed winds on the way back to my house. After going through the usual ritual, I found myself being escorted at a leisurely pace through Wonderland. Either I was getting used to the bike, or I was really that tired.

The entire way I had my cheek against his back and more than once he had released a bike handle to gently squeeze my wrists that were at his waist before returning back to the bars. Each time he did so; a pleasurable tingle would shoot up from my toes through my spine and back down again, the action confusing me in how I responded. After a while I sat up a bit and held his hips to get a little space.

Not too long after, Thatcher was cutting the engine in my driveway and kicked down the stand to rest the bike. I got off and returned his jacket and helmet, watching him put them on like he was reclaiming his second skin. Thatcher took off his shades and eyed me, a smile coming to his face.

"Thanks for the pizza and movie," I said earnestly. "I would've been so bored here by myself," I said, gesturing to the darkened house as explanation. Then I realized what I just implicated and bit back a groan before hanging my head. "That's not what I meant..." I mumbled, irritated by Thatcher's laughter.

"I'm your boredom buffer," he teased, taking my gentle punch in the shoulder with a smile. "It's cool. I'll take it, Miss Slit-Noses-Are-Sexy."

"God! I was just kidding!" I exclaimed, laughing when he flattened his generous nose with his forefinger, imitating a British accent spoken in a hiss.

"Haaaarry..."

"Goodnight," I told him firmly, shaking my head with a laugh as I began to walk towards the house.

"Wait, Kitten!" he laughed, scrambling off the bike to catch up with me. I turned when he caught my elbow and watched him tenderly massage his nose. "It's still sore," he pouted before shaking his head like to clear his thoughts. "Tomorrow's Friday," he sighed. "And if you still need a boredom buffer, I'd be glad to help out."

I felt my eyes grow big, my heartbeat careening out of control as I realized what he was implicating. He asking me out?!

Sensing my distress, Thatcher gave me a gentle smile and his eyes softened. "You can pick where we go. We don't have to call it a date," he fished. I dropped his gaze, probably confirming whatever suspicion he had that I probably hadn't done many of these before, and bit my lip in thought.

I didn't want to be rude and blow him off, especially since he had helped me out both at the park. It was obvious he was just trying to be nice, and the dream from last night...

I shivered a little and smoothed back the hair from my face. He didn't know about the dream, and while it was unexpected, it wasn't like he caused it. If Talon had on the other hand...

Realizing that I was taking forever to respond, I cleared my throat and spat out the first thing that popped in my head.

"What about the arcade?" I asked him, meeting his gaze hesitantly. "It's...it has a little bit of everything. It's cheap. They also have the best cheese fries in town."

"You had me at 'cheap'," he joked, catching my hand before I could do any sort of "damage". His thumb gently stroked over my palm, feeling the soft inside, as though he was checking my pulse.

"If I pick you up at five for our date-that-isn't, will that be okay?" Thatcher asked, his voice doing that strange smooth but deep tone that had my toes curling inside my sneakers. I nodded with a lump in my throat as he took a step closer, his fingers curling around my hand. With a soft squeeze and a smile that contradicted the smoky heat in his eyes, Thatcher murmured, "I'll see you tomorrow, Kitten."

He dropped my hand and walked away, his bike roaring to life and with a small wave; he was gone, leaving the sound of his "crotch rocket" in his wake.

My hand pulsed were his thumb had traced circles and the breath I had been holding came out shaky and ragged.

The aching in my chest began to radiate with new energy for the first time since lunch, though this time, I wasn't quite sure who I was aching for.