Once upon a Dream by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

that isn’t crazy enough, there’s one more thing that tops it all off. I’m in love with him.”
    The easy smile on his face faded. What ran through him was so hot and tangled, so full of layers and routes he couldn’t breathe through it all. “I’ve waited for you, through time, through dreams, through those small windows of life that are as much torture as treasure. Will you come to me now, Kayleen? Freely?”
    She got to her feet, walked across the soft cushion of forest floor to him. “I don’t know how I can feel like this. I only know I do.”
    He pulled her into his arms, and this time the kiss was hungry. Possessive. When she pressed her body to his, wound her arms around his neck, he deepened the kiss, took more. Filled himself with her.
    Her head spun, and she reveled in the giddiness. No one had ever wanted her—not like this. Had ever touched her like this. Needed her. Desire was a hot spurt that fired the blood and made logic, reason, sanity laughable things.
    She had magic. What did she need of reason?
    â€œMine.” He murmured it against her mouth. Said it again and again as his lips raced over her face, her throat. Then, throwing his head back, he shouted it.
    â€œShe’s mine now and ever. I claim her, as is my right.”
    When he lifted her off her feet, lightning slashed across the sky. The world trembled.
    Â 
    They rode through the forest. He showed her a stream where golden fish swam over silver rocks. Where a waterfall tumbled down into a pool clear as blue glass.
    He stopped to pick her wildflowers and thread them through her hair. And when he kissed her, it was soft and sweet.
    His moods, she thought, were as magical as the rest of him, and just as inexplicable. He courted her, making her laugh as he plucked baubles out of thin air and painted rainbows in the sky.
    She could feel the breeze on her cheeks, smell the flowers and the damp. What was in her heart was like music. Fairy tales were real, she thought. All the years she’dturned her back on them, dismissed the happily-ever-after that her mother sighed over, her own magic had been waiting for her.
    Nothing would ever, could ever, be the same again.
    Had she known it somehow? Deep inside, had she known it had only been waiting, that he had only been waiting for her to awake?
    They walked or rode while birds chorused around them and mists faded away into brilliant afternoon.
    There beside the pool he laid a picnic, pouring wine out of his open hand to amuse her. Touching her hair, her cheek, her shoulders dozens of times, as if the contact was as much reassurance as flirtation.
    She’d never had a romance. Never taken the time for one. Now it seemed a lifetime of love and anticipation could be fit into one perfect day.
    He knew something about everything. History, culture, art, literature, science. It was a new thrill to realize that the man who held her heart, who attracted her so completely, appealed to her mind as well. He could make her laugh, make her wonder, make her yearn. And he brought her a contentment she hadn’t known she’d lived without.
    If this was a dream, she thought, as twilight fell and they mounted the horse once more, she hoped never to wake.

5
    A PERFECT DAY deserved a perfect night. She had thought, hoped, that when they returned from their outing, he would take her inside. Take her to bed.
    But he had only kissed her in that stirring way that made her weak and jittery and asked if she might like to change for the evening.
    So she had gone up to her room to worry and wonder how a woman prepared, after the most magical of days, for the most momentous night of her life. Of one thing she was certain. It wouldn’t do to think. If she let her thoughts take shape, the doubts would creep in. Doubts about everything that had happened—and about what would happen yet.
    For once, she would simply act. She would simply be.
    The bath that adjoined her