Alice followed, holding onto him as they made their way through the dancing crowd so she wouldn’t lose him.
It was quieter in the shadows, but she could still feel the thrumming of the people who were dancing.
She felt the wall meet her back and looked up at him.
“I do trust you,” she said and she meant it. That was the strange part.
She stayed where she was, the noise muffled slightly where they were, and waited.
God, it was almost too fucking easy.
The way she said those words, so earnest and without the slightest trace of sarcasm or humour, tightened something in his chest. It was exactly what he’d needed. What he’d worked for. What brought him closer to his money.
And yet, Mateo felt disgust for himself crawl up his spine.
He didn’t need to do this. They could simply dance and drink, and that might be enough to make her run. He could keep giving her these little pieces of freedom until, eventually, she decided she wanted more of it.
And yet.
Mateo released a hand from her waist and raised it to her face. His fingers curled gently beneath her chin, tilting her face towards his.
He let his gaze drop to her mouth as his thumb brushed lightly across her lower lip.
“How much?”
The question came quietly, almost lost beneath the pub's noise.
"How much do you trust me, Alice?"
He touched her face and Alice melted. His thumb brushed across her lower lip and Alice’s heart sped up. She looked at him, with no intention of stopping anything.
“More than I should,” she responded, her voice a whisper soft, her hands still curled into his sleeves. She didn’t let go.
If only she knew how right she was.
Mateo’s eyes flicked up to hers, a small grin returning to his lips as he leaned a little closer.
Close enough to feel the warmth of her skin. Close enough that their noses nearly brushed.
“Still time to run,” he murmured, a tease threaded through the words.
A ruse, perhaps.
His fingers remained curled beneath her chin, gentle but steady, keeping her exactly where she was.
He leaned closer, her eyes moved to his lips. She licked hers, then looked into his eyes. There was little to no space between them now.
“I’m not running,” she said weakly, refusing to stop what was about to happen.
“You’re stalling.”
It’d been her last chance.
For her to pull back, to rethink. To be reasonable. To give him cause to stop, to listen. To be reasonable.
Instead, she met him with attitude, and Mateo couldn’t deny that he liked it.
His grin twitched wider, and just like that, the last excuse he’d given himself disappeared. He closed the gap between them, pressing his lips against hers. His hand glided into her hair, angling her head as his lips moved against hers, soft and slow, yet confident enough to make it clear he had no intention of pulling away.
For one suspended moment, the noise of the pub seemed to disappear.
The noise of the pub had gone somewhere distant.
Alice had kissed someone before. Once. In a different kind of haze, on a bench by the lake at Hogwarts, with candy in her blood and her world falling apart. She hadn’t been sure afterward whether any of it had been hers.
This was different.
This she had chosen. Eyes open (until their lips met), no candy, no borrowed feelings. Just a Whitechapel pub and his hand in her hair and nobody getting hurt because of it.
She returned the kiss. And she didn’t want to stop it. She moved her hands from his sleeves to his collar, pulling him down towards him because he was at least a foot taller than her.
Her hands moved to his collar, pulling him down, and Mateo obliged without complaint. The hand at her waist tightened slightly, drawing her closer, and then the rest of his brain shut off.
Inconveniently, he liked the way she tasted.
Mateo deepened the kiss, his thumb brushing once along her cheek as the world narrowed down, and for a moment, he allowed himself to float away on whiskey and the feel of her against him. The voice at the back of his mind had long stopped echoing through his head.
Again, he had given her the choice. Again, she had chosen to linger.
He might as well lean into it now.
Grinning, Mateo gently caught her lower lip between his teeth, a brief tease before letting go and returning to the kiss, just that little bit firmer.
Mateo’s hand on her waist was warm and firm, something she found that she liked. Just like everything else when she was with him. But this, kissing him, was probably her favorite.
Alice felt the grin against her lips before she registered what he’d done. It barely registered after he resumed kissing her. She managed to pull back just enough to look at him, her fingers still curled into his collar, slightly breathless. Somewhere behind them the fiddle had started up again, the pub reassembling itself around the edges of her attention, warm and smoky and entirely unbothered by the two of them in the shadows.
“Was that necessary?” she asked.
She already knew what the answer was. She smirked before moving one hand from his collar, to the back of his neck, pulling his mouth back to hers. She didn’t care for a response, she just wanted to keep kissing him and breathing him in.
She pulled back, and Mateo met her eyes.
“Was that necessary?”
Before he could answer, Alice’s lips were already back on his, hungrier, and Mateo responded with a quiet chuckle against her mouth, squeezing her waist as he fell back into the kiss.
His grin lingered. He certainly hadn’t expected her to be this eager. Perhaps it was the alcohol. Perhaps it was the same restless hunger for freedom and experience that had brought her here in the first place.
Either way, Mateo was happy to provide.
Saturday, 26 May 1923
Way too late
Mateo’s flat, London
Alice giggled as she stumbled from the landing, practically into Mateo’s arms. She’d drank more than she had before and couldn’t even stand up straight on her own.
“Careful with the landing there,” she said, looking up at him.
She was aware, distantly, that she was telling him to be careful when she was the one who had nearly fallen. She found that very funny.
“This is your fault,” she added with a jab of her finger into his chest, though she was still giggling. “You kept refilling my glass.”
She looked around at wherever they were, trying to get her bearings.
Mateo caught her as Alice stumbled into his arms, eyes twinkling with amusement. He grinned lightly.
“You kept drinking it.”
Perhaps he really shouldn’t have given her as much as he had. As enjoyable as watching her giggle and grin at everything was, taking her home like this was a risk. If anybody got wind of this, he was toast. Sending her back to Hogwarts in this state had been riskier, though, so here they were.
His flat in Whitechapel.
One sitting room, one bedroom, a kitchenette, and a tiny bathroom. Nothing remarkable. The floors were wooden and old, the walls plain plaster, and the furniture functional. No clutter. He kept his belongings organised. It wasn't shabby. Just modest. Practical. Sparse.
Private.
He hadn’t planned on this. To let her see his space. Too personal. But too late now.
Mateo watched as she looked around the room, still loosely held against him.
“Try not to be too impressed,” he said drily, but not without a hint of humour. “You gonna stay upright long enough for me to show you where the sofa is?”
Alice looked around the flat, still loosely held against him, still giggling slightly at nothing in particular, her own arm loose around his waist for support.
The flat was small. Sparse. Nothing like anywhere she had ever been.
And it was his.
That was the thing that caught her. Every room she had ever been in had belonged to someone else: her father’s house, her grandfather’s house, Hogwarts. Even her dormitory was shared. But this – these plain walls and old wooden floors and functional furniture – this was Mateo’s, and only Mateo’s.
Then she saw the book.
On the table by the couch. Battered edges, faded cover. San Jorge y el Dragón. Right where someone would put something they carried everywhere and finally set down.
She stopped giggling and looked at him. “You’re not as unimpressive as you want me to think.”
Because to her, what was the most impressive thing of all, was that this was his.
She walked carefully toward the sofa and sat down, then looked up at him. “I’m not tired,” she said. “Just so you know.”
She looked up at him, and his brow furrowed slightly.
Mateo had no idea what made her insist he was somehow interesting or impressive. Blinded. That was what she was. Dazzled by the fractured glimpses of a world she didn’t understand.
Awed by a twisted fantasy of freedom he was stringing up for her.
If she had the faintest idea of who he really was—what he did, who he worked for, what this life actually demanded of him—Mateo had no doubt her assessment would be different. A subtle glint of disgust and horror in her eyes as she turned and hurried back to the comfort she knew.
But that wasn’t what he was being paid for. So Mateo kept his thoughts tightly sealed behind closed lips.
Turned out Alice found the sofa all on her own.
He slowly followed, but he didn’t sit. Slipping his hands into his pockets, Mateo looked down at her with a faint grin.
“Not tired,” he repeated, his lips tugging a little wider. His gaze lingered on her for a moment, taking in the state of her.
“So what do you wanna do?”
Alice looked at Mateo, who was still on the other side of the coffee table from her, watching her with his hands in his pockets.
He was too tall. And too far. And that was entirely unacceptable. She thought he was going to join her. But all he was doing was looking.
So, after a moment, Alice managed to push herself up from the sofa – it took a moment because she was unsteady on her feet – and navigated around the coffee table. She grabbed his sleeve.
“Come here,” she said, which was not really something she was going to give him the chance to say ‘no’ to. She pulled him back to the couch with her, practically forcing him to sit.
Then she hardly gave him a moment to get comfortable before her mouth had found his. She’d really enjoyed kissing him the other night, and wanted more of that. She’d missed it all week and found she could hardly think of anything else.
Alright then.
Mateo let her pull him around the table and push him down onto the sofa, chuckling lightly as Alice’s lips found his barely a second later. He returned the kiss without hesitation, one hand sliding into her hair.
Again, he probably shouldn’t.
Not here. Not like this.
But when had he ever been a man to say no? When had he ever been someone who didn’t use a situation to his advantage, especially one he could exploit so effortlessly? Alice was drunk—far more than he’d intended her to be—but he knew better than to waste an opportunity.
His hand slipped from her hair to her thigh, fingers curling lightly against the fabric as he drew her closer, guiding her across his lap. His grin returned against her lips.
“You miss me that much?”
Alice sucked in a breath when he pulled her closer to him, onto his lap.
She was closer to him now than she’d been all night, which was saying something given the dancing, and the kissing they’d done before in the Whitechapel pub’s shadows. His hand was warm on her thigh and she was aware of every point of contact between them.
“Yes,” she said more honestly than she had intended, her voice breathy.
She looked at him for a beat, and then decided that she didn’t mind.
Alice kissed him again, her hands finding his hair this time, and leaned against him him. She wanted to be closer still, which didn’t really seem possible, but… she’d try anyway.
She followed his lead as easily as warm wax, butter in his hands.
There was something unsettlingly satisfying about it.
Mateo kept his hand where it was, lightly pressed against her thigh, the other following suit. He met her eyes as her answer settled into the tiny space between them, doing something strange to him.
He couldn’t deny that he liked that answer.
In ways he knew were all wrong.
Alice leaned in, her hands sliding into his hair as she resumed the kiss, and Mateo felt that familiar haze settle over him. Unthinking, existing—letting her touch, her weight against him, carry him away.
His hands slid to her hips, fingers tightening as he pulled her that little bit closer. He broke the kiss just enough to murmur, "You keep this up, I might start thinking you actually like me."
Mateo’s hands moved to her hips, and Alice found that she liked them there. Especially since he managed to somehow pull her in even just a little bit closer.
He broke the kiss, but not in a bad way. When Alice opened her eyes, she heard him murmur.
Did she like him? She thought it went without saying that she was completely intoxicated not just by the whiskey but also by him. He was free, and she envied that. She loved that when she was around him, she didn’t feel rage about her life. She didn’t feel hollow, or alone.
“Maybe I do,” she responded, her words equally as murmured as his had been. After letting her eyes search his momentarily, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling even closer to him.
“Stop talking,” she finally said, just a second later, before going in for another kiss.
Maybe she did.
It left a bitter taste on his tongue after all.
Too sincere. Too personal. Too complicated. Had he thought this through? This whole thing? Make her run. Make her cut ties. Wrap her around his finger.
And then what?
Who would he be in that equation? Where would his conscience go?
As she searched his eyes, Mateo searched hers in return, as though the answers might be hidden somewhere behind those brown irises. But he found nothing. Only that same, steady gaze that seemed to look right through him. Deep. Knowing. Old, somehow.
The moment was gone a second later.
Alice wrapped her arms around his neck, and then her mouth was back on his. Mateo let it pull him under and away. His grin returned.
“Yes, milady”, he mumbled against her lips, amusement curling through his voice.
His hands slid back to her thighs, and he rose from the sofa with her in his arms. He broke the kiss only long enough to glance toward the bedroom before carrying her the few steps.
A moment later, he lowered them onto the mattress, his crooked grin still in place, his mouth back on hers.
|
