Through Time-Frankie by Claudy Conn Read Free Book Online Page B

her away. She stopped him and cried out, “My friends—Graely, I can’t leave them.”
    He gave her a look and murmured with that delicious old world accent of his, “Of course you can’t, ‘tis why you are still here, isn’t it?” He simply leaned over with one arm and took hold of her two friends as he made another clear path through the crowd and led them into the parking lot.
    No one approached them. No one did more than glance his way and move out of it.
    At her friends’ car, he stopped to admonish with a finger, “I don’t like that you got caught in such a situation.”
    “Not my fault,” she said softly and looked into those dark brightly lit eyes.
    “You drive,” he said and took Barbara’s keys out of her fingers and handed them to her. Barbara’s mouth was wide open but neither she nor Sally were speaking, they just continued to stare.
    “Take them home, Frankie, and then go straight home yourself,” Graely added.
    “Aye, aye,” she answered on a half smile. “Thank you, Graely.”
    She got into the driver’s seat and as she pulled away she saw him in her mirror. He stood watching them drive off and then he was gone.
    She dropped off Sally and then left Barbara at her house with her car keys. Both had wanted to know who Graely was and she had waved it off, saying an old friend.
    Barbara lived only a block away and she shifted home from there, and went straight to her garden and called his name, “Graely? Graely, I know you are nearby. I know .”
    He shifted in and she reached up and removed his hood and smiled at him, “Thank you, again. You are always there when I need you.”
    “You didn’t really need me, Frankie. You could have shifted off anytime you wanted,” he answered on a dark frown.
    “No, I couldn’t leave my friends and I didn’t want to shift them out until it was a last resort. If I had done that I would have had to use a memory spell on them and you know memory spells could have left them dazed and unwell for weeks. I couldn’t do that if there was another way.”
    The amber lights in his dark eyes danced and a soft smile curved his luscious lips and she reached out and touched those lips, wishing he would put them to hers. For months and months she had been fantasizing about kissing Graely.
    He frowned and shoved her hand away. “Don’t do that. Don’t think this is a romance. You are a child. I am…a Dark Prince.”
    “Graely,” she said not in the least perturbed by his harsh behavior. “Ye are so much more than that.”
    “But not for you, never for you .”
    He was gone, just like that and although his words pinched, they had not really gotten her down. Frankie was wise beyond her years, way beyond her years. She remembered what she said after he had gone, “Ye are wrong, Graely.”
    And now, in the quiet of her room, in the Highlands of Scotland, months later, she said it again, “Oh Graely, m’own Dark Prince. Ye are wrong to think that ye are not for me. So wrong.”
     

Chapter Six
     
    ESLYM MOVED GRACEFULLY across her bedroom, content with her lot, now that life was so different—different because of him.
    He had just left her. She remembered the way he had kissed her, touched her and passionately fondled her breasts, before he laid her down, and took her over and over again, she felt heated once more.
    A small part of her felt guilty.
    He had come to her parent’s home and had taken her in her bedroom. They were out at a meeting, and although she was of age to have a lover, they certainly would not have approved of this and they did not approve of him.
    They were suspicious of Pestale and did not believe that he had any good in him at all. They thought she was naïve.
    But, they didn’t know, they just didn’t feel what she felt—how could they?
    When he entered her life, she became his and his alone.
    He filled her with wanting.
    Oddly enough, when this thought flitted through her mind, so did an image of Darmon.
    She had thought she