Read Midnight Whispers - Paranormal Romance for Free Online

experience with youngsters, but the boy was easy to
please and not very demanding.
    As for Jake’s
older brothers, they were constantly teasing him about his ‘new girlfriend’,
making jokes and telling her all kinds of tales.
    “You know I
remember the time he woke up to find an earwig sitting next to him on his
pillow,” Tyler, the eldest, said one day. “It was the middle of the night, and
I don’t think anyone got a wink of sleep after that.”
    “Screamed
like a girl,” Byron, the second oldest, chortled. “Came running down the hall
to our parents’ room like the fires of hell were chasing him.”
    “I did not,”
Jake said, laughing, but his cheeks were scarlet.
    “You did
too!” Tom, the youngest only by two years, piped up. “I ought to remember since
you and I shared the same room. I don’t think I’d ever seen you run so fast
before.”
    “Now, boys,”
Kyra said, unable to keep from laughing as Jake cuffed Tom over the head. “I’m
worried that if you keep it up he’ll turn so red he might explode!”
    Jake grinned
at her. “I think that’s the idea,” he said, taking her by the hand. “Now let’s
be off before they convince you that you shouldn’t hang around with me
anymore.”
    Kyra really
wanted to fall in love with Jake. He was such a nice young man, and she knew
that a marriage to him would provide her with a sense of financial security and
a stable family she could one day call her own. He also seemed to genuinely
like and admire her, and knew from the looks he sometimes cast her way when she
thought he wasn’t looking that he was interested in her.
    But try as
she might, the only affection she felt for him was that of what a sister might
feel for her brother. She knew that amongst the gentry many women were
satisfied with that level of affection between themselves and their husbands,
and were even considered lucky to have any sort of genuine relationship at all
considering just how many marriages of convenience were made every year.
    Kyra could
count on one hand the number of marriages she knew in which both partners were
faithful to each other, and it only made her angry that people were willing to
say the vows so casually in the house of God that would bind them, and then
break them just as casually as soon as the day after. Perhaps the priest should
make a special set of vows for couples entering matrimony without a love match.
It would be unorthodox, certainly, and maybe even considered heretical, but at
least the priest wouldn’t be forcing people to lie under God’s roof eight out
of ten times he performed a marriage ceremony.
    Worse, she
found herself dreaming more and more frequently about Bryce. At first it was
the nightmares, where her house was being ransacked and burned, and he would
come around the corner in place of the man that would always try to murder her
right before she woke up. But instead of simply grinning at her, he would take
her by the hand, and she would feel a sense of security envelope her instead of
the fear she knew she should.
    “Come,” he
would say, pulling her along, and he would lead her to safety, avoiding falling
debris and passing rebels when he could, and striking them down when he
couldn’t. But when they stepped out into the fresh air, it was always into the
woods, and not the manicured grounds that belonged to her father’s estate. They
would be inside the maze, standing at the heart of it, but the walls would look
different, and Kyra would be unable to find her way out.
    “Help me,”
she would say to Bryce, “you must know the way out. Why won’t you help me find
the way out?”
    He would
shake his head at her. “This is simply the conflict inside your heart
projecting itself into the dream, Kyra. You must decide your fate. Whether or
not you will choose me, or whatever it is that is waiting for you outside these
trees. Despite your fear, you already know somewhere inside you that I will not
let harm come to you, that I will