Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams by Christina Skye Read Free Book Online Page B

found the bedroom by feel and memory alone. He had memories enough for a hundred lifetimes, after all.
    And then the moon met him in greeting, poured in a luminous pool on the bare wooden floor. Almost as bright as her hair spilling over the white linen pillow, he thought. Almost as beautiful as her smile, faint and soft and infinitely sweet now in sleep.
    The darkness trembled. Will became being. Emotion turned to brooding substance.
    A shadow fell over the sleeping woman’s face.
    Outside the wind rose, shaking the casement, tossing gravel and broken twigs against the gatehouse.
    Dreaming still, she twisted restlessly, dimly sensing nature’s distant warning.
    The glass panes shuddered, and the shuddering turned to rapping. Then the rapping, too, changed—became low, urgent drumming. Beside the window, the thick damask curtains rippled and flared out, with the slow grace of an underwater scene.
    The brooding eyes swept over the sleeper’s face, issuing a silent command.
    Wake up, they whispered. We have waited long for you, and now the time for sleep is past.
    The phantom eyes waited, raw with hunger.
    But for now, seeing her was enough. There would be time for all the rest in the long dreaming midnights of summer yet to come.
    Since, of course, she could never be allowed to leave this place again.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE SUN SHONE FROM A cloudless sky the following morning as Kacey halted at the door to a sunny dining room overlooking the moat and western lawns.
    His face expressionless, Nicholas Draycott held out a chair for her. “I trust you slept well, Miss Mallory.”
    He was clean-shaven and perfectly dressed, and the sight only made Kacey angry, since she had been reduced to wearing the same rumpled shirt and creased jeans from yesterday. “Perfectly, thank you,” she lied, sliding into her seat, knowing full well that the dark circles under her eyes must belie her words.
    â€œIn that case, let’s get right down to business,” Draycott said in that abrupt, intense way that Kacey was coming to see was a habit with him. “As I see it, we have two choices.”
    â€œAren’t you forgetting something?” Kacey countered.
    â€œI don’t believe so.”
    â€œYou agreed to call New York.”
    â€œAh.” Draycott paused, his eyes unreadable. “It seems that Ms. Edwards is unavailable. Her answering service said that she had gone on holiday.”
    Damn! Kacey looked down. Cassandra hadn’t told her she was planning to go away. It complicated everything! Frowning, she looked back at Draycott. “Well?”
    â€œWell, what, Miss Mallory?”
    â€œWhat are you going to do about it?”
    â€œSince I can’t very well summon Miss Edwards back from her vacation, we’ll just have to proceed as planned—until she returns, at least. I’m prepared to do that much.”
    Kacey was prepared to do that much, too, but she wasn’t about to like it. But what choice had she, really?
    Partly to avoid those piercing silver-gray eyes, Kacey looked out the window, where bright morning sunlight streamed through emerald velvet curtains worked with a dragon crest and an entwined D.
    The Draycott coat of arms, no doubt, she thought sourly.
    In the aftermath of the storm, the air was crystal clear and the lawns hung with diamonds of dew. From somewhere over the hill, she heard the distant bleating of sheep. Today even the sheer granite walls seemed less forbidding—sunwarmed, dappled by scattered patches of lichen.
    Almost protective, somehow.
    Yes, in the bright light of day Kacey could almost convince herself that yesterday had been a bad dream.
    Until she looked up into Draycott’s piercing eyes, that was. Into his chiseled, brooding face, which quickly reminded her that what had happened in the stable was anything but a dream.
    There was no way to forget how those eyes had stripped her bare. How his hard body had felt when he’d