Page 42 of Locked in Wonderland

I was hungry enough that if he’d offered me the rat off the street, I probably wouldn’t have turned it down. “Soup sounds great.”

He carried a pan across the room and ladled a thick, steaming liquid into a bowl. It smelled meaty, which probably meant I shouldn’t completely discount the rats. Despite my growling stomach, I hesitated before picking up the spoon. “I really need to know what this is going to cost me,” I said. “The food. Letting me stay here.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Donovan shook his head. “There are still good people in Wonderland.” He crossed to the counter and returned with a huge chunk of bread, placing it beside me. “Not many,” he added. “But we exist.” He gestured toward the bowl. “Eat while it’s still warm.”

It all seemed a little too good to be true. But what use was I going to be to Warren if I starved to death? With that in mind, I dug in, practically inhaling the food while Donovan watched. If it was rat soup, it was cooked well. The scraps of meat were tender and not remotely chewy. I decided it best not to ask. It looked like beef. Therefore, in my head, it was beef. I imagined that if I kept a journal, I might title this meal The Downfall of the Environmental Health Inspector.

“What happened to your voice?” he asked.

I paused from dipping a chunk of bread into the soup. “Nothing. Just a sore throat.”

Donovan’s knowing smirk suggested he didn’t believe that for a second. He’d probably asked to see whether I’d admit the truth. Yeah, right? Like I was going to tell a man I’d known for all of five minutes that a stranger had fucked my throat with such enthusiasm it’d left me with laryngitis.

“Can I sleep here?” I asked, keen to change the subject.

“Yes.”

I finished the soup in silence, savoring every mouthful and devouring the bread. Once I was done, Donovan led me into another room containing a single bed. “Sleep here,” he said.

“I can’t take your bed. Where will you sleep?”

“I already slept.”

That was entirely possible, given the daylight streaming through the windows. Maybe he was just an early riser. I wanted to ask. I also wanted to ask what he planned to do while I slept.

Unfortunately, exhaustion had evolved into something worse. Something heavy and all-consuming that made forming words feel like a superhuman feat.

He left the room, and I stared after him for a moment before turning my attention to the bed. The sheets didn’t look clean, but I couldn’t summon the energy to care.

Get undressed, or climb in as I was? Simple answer. I’d never tried sleeping in leather, but I was confident it wouldn’t be comfortable.

My eyes were already drooping shut as I stripped, leaving a heap of leather on the carpet-less floor.

Dirty or not, the sheets felt cool against my skin. That was my last coherent thought before sleep claimed me.

Chapter Fifteen

I woke feeling as though I’d stumbled through a sandstorm and let my eyes take the brunt of it. What the fuck? Then the events of the previous day came flooding back.

The contacts.

So much had happened since Percy and Lola had turned my naturally brown eyes blue that I’d completely forgotten about them. Removing the contacts took several minutes, my only point of reference for how it was supposed to be done, people on television. It took another minute before my eyes stopped streaming and I could see properly.

The first thing I noticed was the pile of clothes. They hadn’t been there the night before, which meant Donovan had left them for me. As gifts go, it was one of the nicest I’d ever received.

Beside them sat a bucket of water with a yellow sponge floating in it and a towel that looked as though it had survived several wars. The water turned out to be freezing rather than merely cold, but that only made it more refreshing. By the time I’d finished washing, the last traces of sleep had gone.

The jeans were soft and well-worn. They were far too small to have ever been Donovan’s, which raised the question of where they’d come from. The black tank top left my arms bare, but it was still infinitely preferable to the skintight and barely-there leather. The boots I kept. There was nothing wrong with them in isolation.

I’d just finished tying the laces when Donovan’s bulk filled the doorway. “Breakfast?”

“That would be great.”

Another bonus was that my voice sounded almost normal again, with only a faint trace of hoarseness remaining. I followed him into the kitchen, where we repeated the previous night’s routine, only with porridge instead of soup.