“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the grinning boy as he climbed down from one of the trees beside the path.
Though startled I couldn’t bring myself to run away. This peculiar boy had the most mesmerizing smile and I felt my own traitorous lips curling up in response.
“Wouldn’t do what?” I asked coyly.
“You really shouldn’t pick the Queen’s flowers,” he said, continuing to grin. “It’s an executable offense.”
Was he teasing me? I had witnessed some bizarre things since my fall down the rabbit hole, but a death sentence for picking flowers was ridiculous. He had to be joking.
“How would she find out?” I asked, deciding to play along. “I don’t see any Flower Police around.”
“How do you know that I’m not the Flower Police?” he asked, dragging his nails along the bark of the oak tree. “I could be very, very dangerous. I’m a stranger. You probably shouldn’t even be talking to me.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The languorous way he moved and the sound of his nails raking the dry tree bark ran a chill up my spine. Who was this boy with his shining smile gleaming from the shadows?
“My name?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and placing his hand on his chest. “My name is Ches.”
“O.k. Ches, my name is Alice,” I said. “Now we are no longer strangers.”
Ches smiled even more widely and took a rolling step out of the shadows. As he stood before me, I was captivated by his eyes. Ches had the mesmerizing eyes of a cat with amber irises and slitted pupils.
“I may no longer be a stranger,” he said with a leering grin, “but I can still be dangerous.”
Forgetting about the flowers, I stepped closer to Ches putting my pale hand on his wide chest. He raised his hand to my cheek and trailed one claw lazily down my jaw to rest on my neck.
Claw? It was then that I realized what Ches was. If there could be hookah-smoking caterpillars and time-piece obsessed rabbits, then why not werecats? My hand raised and lowered with his breathing and his claw jumped with my pulse, but Ches continued grinning down at me. Was he toying with me the way a cat plays with a mouse? I raised my chin and looked from his eyes to his beautiful smiling mouth.
Ches brought his clawed hand to the back of my neck and kissed me deeply. A low growl escaped his still smiling lips.
“Toy with me,” I gasped, and hoped that this too was not an executable offense. If so, the Queen be damned.

©E.J. Stevens 2010