Hi, so here is another chapter, thank you all so much for your kind reviews and i do apologise for it being so late in updating, and my work load has been increasing as my uni year has increased. I do hope the next chapter will be up sooner rather than later but i do appreciate all of you who have been waiting for this chapter.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine just this plotline. The headcannon surrounding Cyrus's relationship with his former masters and mistresses as well as the headcannon surrounding his father.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

If You Really Love Someone

Chapter 3-Cryus-Inner Beauty

Events-Cyrus tries to get himself under control as he and Alice see an opportunity meanwhile he tries to think of something…anything…that will keep her company before she uses her wishes.

They had walked for miles, but it didn't seem like it. Alice was surprisingly strong and able to keep up with him and Cyrus was for once glad to be out in the open air. The last time he had been in Wonderland so many years ago the realm was still taking shape and after months trapped in a bottle in a desert it was nice to feel the breeze upon your face and something other than sand under your feet.

But he could still feel it in every crevice of his body. Sand. Sometimes it reminded him of his home. Of his mother. Of his brothers. Of the sand that was everywhere even in your bed. Sometimes it was comforting. Sometimes it was downright painful, but mostly it was uncomfortable.

Alice was currently looking down at her clothes. Her skirt was mostly in one piece but it was getting more and more obvious that her shirt had seen better days and the mud on her stockings was getting worse. Hopefully the clothes horse would be around at some point and then they could change. He wondered briefly how Alice would pay for them, would she use one of her wishes? Cyrus remembered how it felt when someone used them, like your heart was being squeezed through a vice as a part of the bond that tethered you to your master was forced away.

He forced himself to breath in again and thought of his father. When his father had died his mother had been distraught. The three of them, the three brothers had been sharing a room at that time and when the illness had took his father Cyrus had crawled into his oldest brothers bed and felt his two brothers curl around him protecting him desperately from the outside world. They had done that nearly all their lives and now they had been punished-punished or killed or what not and Cyrus had always hated himself for that.

But his father had been the one that had told him when he found that woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with then he would know about it. It was a feeling as he had called it. A feeling that your life wouldn't make sense without that other person in it and Cyrus who had been around the genie bottle with both masters and mistresses knew painfully that once Alice used her wishes (and use them she must) then they would perhaps never see each other again and that-even having only been in her company for at least a day and a half Cyrus could already envision himself not being able to get over the loss of Alice.

Damn.

They reached a small path in the road and Alice stopped suddenly pulling Cyrus out of his rather depressing thoughts and sending him crashing into the back of her. There was a second where he was suddenly assaulted with the scent of Alice's hair, soft in his face and smelling like rose water and a deliciously buttery golden brown colour. Cyrus had a sudden urge to stick his face in that hair and breath in the smell until he was so drunk over it he would never smell anything again.

The second thing that happened was that her arse connected beautifully with his legs and more importantly the thing in between them that had long since been dormant.

Mores the pity.

But he was surprised suddenly trying desperately to combat the arousal that had shot through him so strong that he thought he might just sink to his knees there and then beg Alice to use him like his other mistresses had in the past.

Alice had not turned around and Cyrus was wondering if…finally…she had thought of something to use her first wish on when she turned around so that they were nose to nose. He could see every individual fair eyelash and he was suddenly very aware that if he so much as leaned forwards an inch he would be kissing those very kissable lips that were in a perfect cupid's bow.

Oh fuck…

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This was different than anything he had endured before. Of that he was sure of.

He bit his lip and he thought he saw a spark of something in her eyes for a second. Something like desire.

But he had to be imagining it surely?

Just when Cyrus had told himself that he was his father's son and he should behave himself in a gentlemanly fashion and take a step back before he behaved unseemly Alice tilted her head to the side and then grinned at him.

"Can you hear that?"

Cyrus paused straining his ears and forcing his teeth down onto the skin of his lip in order to control himself from saying anything that could be considered inappropriate. There was a pause and then he grinned because he could hear it. He could hear what had so obviously fixated on.

She turned and ran then through the trees and Cyrus followed bottle in one hand and bag with the still squirming rabbit in another.

They came into a little clearing and then he could see the waterfall with the pool underneath it. It was one of those hidden treasures of Wonderland that gave the place it's name. Cyrus grinned thought it was more to himself than to Alice. It had been so long since he had had a good wash, he had been in one shithole of a place and then another and he could still feel sand under his fingernails. Sinking into the cool water and letting it lap at his skin and finally managing to wash his hair seemed too good to be true.

"Fancy a swim?" Alice asked. If Cyrus had managed to tear his eyes away from the water then he would have seen the nerves flicker across her face. It would have been the first kind of negative emotion that she had expressed in his presence but he was too fixed on the water. If he had looked he would have seen Alice bit her own lip and then make up her mind on what she wanted to do. But he didn't so when he turned around he saw Alice throwing caution to the wind (though he wouldn't know it yet for some time) and unbuttoning her blouse.

If you had asked Cyrus there and then at that moment in time what he was thinking as he saw Alice's thin corset under her blouse, the creamy flesh exposed to him and the way she bent to pull of her stockings he honestly couldn't tell you.

She did keep her skirt on something Cyrus infinitely grateful for because if she had taken that off as well then he might have done something ungentlemanly like, like…throw Alice up against the nearest tree and kiss her senseless. Gods above, only a day and a half in this woman's company and he was already going mad. They had chatted somewhat as they had been walking and while she was coy with the details he was cataloguing every bit of information she gave him like some sort of starving animal at the grandest feast in the realm.

If his big brothers could see him now.

"Why not" he said after working his throat. "You get in and I'll come and join you once I find a place to hide the bag and the bottle"

Alice nodded and scrapped her hair upwards with some spare twine. This Cyrus decided did not help in the slightest. Now he could see the elegance of her neck where (he was ashamed to admit the little guilty leap of pleasure he felt when he imagined it) it would be delightfully easy to leave his mark, and he could also see the small freckles on her shoulders, the curve of her breasts were more defined in the corset she was wearing and without another comment he leapt into the shrubbery like an out of control teenager and did not come out for ten minutes and did not look Alice in the eye the entire time they were in the water.

Once Alice had climbed out, her hair mostly dry and Cyrus had decided it was better for everyone including himself if he stayed in the water for a bit longer she said something about the clothes horse and disappeared. Considering the clothes horse was something Cyrus didn't need and Alice clearly did he tilted his head back in the water and watched the dark purple sky slowly becoming darker and darker as the day went by. He pulled himself out of the lake wrapped his shirt around him in some sort of a makeshift blanket, laid his wet hair on the grass and then without warning, felt his eyelids go heavy and he fell fast asleep.

When he woke the sky had turned dark and he was warm surprisingly. One of the blankets from his bottle had been wrapped over him, the thick wool soft around him. He forced his eyes open to see the warmth of a fire and something stewing in a pot. Alice was prodding the fire with a stick. She didn't know he was awake yet and Cyrus took the opportunity to admire her again committing every new change to memory. She had changed into a pair of long pants that he knew without even managing to get the exact angle would frame her backside perfectly. She was wearing a loose pink and white shirt and a belt around her waist and while her hair was down Cyrus noticed that she had managed to snag a few ribbons in case she needed to tie it back.

Alice turned then and saw him staring. She had caught him out but she didn't say anything. Cyrus pushed himself up onto his elbow and he forced himself to smile and pretend that even though he was clean every bone in his body was aching and he was struggling to control his raging hormones whenever he was around this woman.

He couldn't understand what was happening, he had been in Alice's company for a shorter time than he had most mistresses and already he got the feeling that if she asked to use him like some of the other mistresses that had commanded his bottle had, (and he would hold up his hands and say that sometimes he had wanted to crawl out of his bottle and into a warm bed and to be touched and held with some degree of comfort) then even here and now he would lie on his back, raise his hands in surrender, spread his legs and let her take him until she tired of him.

(He might not recover when she was done with him but Cyrus got a feeling that even if Alice used all three wishes in the next hour he wouldn't recover from her leaving him here alone)

"I managed to snag something from the clothes horse that we could eat" Alice said turning her attention to the broth that she was stirring. "He said it was rabbit but I'm not quite sure. To be honest I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with my rabbit"

She turned and gave him a long look from under her eyelashes. "I suppose you must think very badly of me? For stripping in front of you and insisting you swim with me"

Cyrus laughed. "That" He said truthfully and before he could stop the words tumbling out of his mouth. "Was one of the best afternoons I have ever had in a long time"

There was a moment where she stared at him for a second and then Alice grinned. "I want to see this realm in full" she said firmly. "I want to see it all and I want you to come with me…and no that's not a wish. I…err…I just enjoy your company, Cyrus, you're the first person that I want to spend time with…the first person that I…that makes me feel safe and whole again"

Cyrus stared at her. He could feel all the feelings that he had suppressed for so long bubbling to the surface. My God he thought to himself forcing himself not to think about anything that would make him want to cry, forcing himself not to think about weather or not this was a declaration that she wouldn't use her wishes or what it would be like when she inevitably did. This woman he thought bitterly was beautiful both inside and out and he would be damned if he didn't drink up every second that he could be in her presence.

But he was full of self loathing as it was of that he knew. Alice would move on, they all moved on in the end. But he decided he might as well live in the moment. His heart was mangled enough for well over two lifetimes in a bottle for it to be mangled any more.

But right now he didn't care. Right now all he cared about was that this woman that made him feel whole again for the first time in a long time was watching him with wide eyes filled with hope and he was sure as the skies above him were dark not going to disappoint.

"Of course I will"

And he was rewarded with another glorious smile.

Next chapter will probably be this scene and a little bit more from Alice's POV.

And let me know what you think, i will try and update as soon as i can.