Once upon a Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought—and my last. Protecting her, and yes, perhaps, by doing so having her love me the more. I would take this cruel man’s wealth and his position from him. I vowed this, and oh, how her eyes shone, diamonds of tears. I would take what he had and lay it at her feet. She would live like a queen, and I would care for her all my life.”
    â€œBut stealing—”
    â€œWill you just listen?” Exasperation hissed through his voice.
    â€œOf course.” Her chin lifted, a little tilt of resentment. “I beg your pardon.”
    â€œSo this I did, whistling the wind, drawing down themoon, kindling the cold fire. This I did, and did freely for her. And the man woke freezing in a crofter’s cot instead of his fine manor house. He woke in rags instead of his warm nightclothes. I took his life from him, without spilling a drop of blood. And when it was done, I stood in the smoldering dark of that last dawn, triumphant.”
    He fell into silence a moment, and when he continued, his voice was raw. “The Keepers encased me in a shield of crystal, holding me there as I cursed them, as I shouted my protests, as I used the heart and innocence of my young maid as my defense for my crime. And they showed me how she laughed as she gathered the wealth I’d sent to her, as she leapt into a carriage laden with it and fell into the arms of the lover with whom she’d plotted the ruin of the man she hated. And my ruin as well.”
    â€œBut you loved her.”
    â€œI did, but the Keepers don’t count love as an excuse, as a reason. I was given a choice. They would strip me of my power, take away what was in my blood and make me merely human. Or I would keep it, and live alone, in a half world, without companionship, without human contact, without the pleasures of the world that I, in their estimation, had betrayed.”
    â€œThat’s cruel. Heartless.”
    â€œSo I claimed, but it didn’t sway them. I took the second choice, for they would not empty me. I would not abjure my birthright. Here I have existed, since that night of betrayal, a hundred years times five, with only one week each century to feel as a man does again.
    â€œI am a man, Kayleen.” With his hand still gripping hers, he got to his feet. Drew her up. “I am,” he murmured, sliding his free hand into her hair, fisting it there.
    He lowered his head, his lips nearly meeting hers, then hesitated. The sound of her breath catching, releasing, shivered through him. She trembled under his hand, and he felt, inside himself, the stumble of her heart.
    â€œQuietly this time,” he murmured. “Quietly.” And brushed his lips, a whisper, once…twice over hers. Theflavor bloomed inside him like a first sip of fine wine.
    He drank slowly. Even when her lips parted, invited, he drank slowly. Savoring the texture of her mouth, the easy slide of tongues, the faint, faint scrape of teeth.
    Her body fit against his, so lovely, so perfect. The heat from the moonstone held between their hands spread like sunlight and began to pulse.
    So even drinking slowly he was drunk on her.
    When he drew back, her sigh all but shattered him.
    â€œA ghra.” Weak, wanting, he lowered his brow to hers. With a sigh of his own he tugged the pendant free. Her eyes, soft, loving, clouded, began to clear. Before the change was complete, he pressed his mouth to hers one last time.
    â€œDream,” he said.

4
    S HE WOKE TO watery sunlight and the heady scent of roses. There was a low fire simmering in the grate and a silk pillow under her head.
    Kayleen stirred and rolled over to snuggle in.
    Then shot up in bed like an arrow from a plucked bow.
    My God, it had really happened. All of it.
    And for lord’s sake, for lord’s sake, she was naked again.
    Had he given her drugs, hypnotized her, gotten her drunk? What other reason could there be for her to have slept like a baby—and naked as one—in a