Alice is accosted by a Faceless guy who is taken away and tortured by Blood's men (specifically, Pierce) to see if he's part of a rival family. Peter begins a deadly battle with Boris. Nightmare prevents Alice from interrupting, but she finally manages to break free and intervene. Alice and Borishave sex, further ensnaring Alice in Wonderland, but she still can't bring herself to move in with him. Blood refuses to let her pay to stay at his mansion, and she doesn't want to be Nightmare or Vivaldi's guest. The volume ends with a short featuring Boris fetching food for Alice after this volume's sex scene.

So many of the volumes in this series have kissing-only romance that it hadn't even occurred to me that some of them might have sex, so the on-page (tastefully done, but multi-page) sex scene caught me by surprise. It's vague enough that I suppose it could be really intense cuddling... Okay, so it was definitely sex. I had to laugh at one part of the volume, which turned a grape tomato being speared by a fork into sexual imagery.

Anyway, the relationship between Boris and Alice still has problematic elements, what with it being focused primarily on Boris's jealousy and characters' attempts to keep Alice bound to Wonderland. Even Nightmare referred to Boris as their “best ball-and-chain.”

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

Lovely artwork, decidedly kinky story line. Alice admits her love for the Cheshire Cat and their relationship moves to a new level (be forewarned: some explicitly sexual scenes) here, but did she naturally fall for the Cat, or was their relationship guided by other hands?