Read This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) for Free Online Page A

extravagantly and most elegantly proud. The beauty, detail, and quality of everything they planned for this day were unsurpassable.
    Adam knew it was Rashid who was the driving force and inspiration behind the wedding reception. He and Mirella had done little about their wedding except decide to exchange their marital vows in a simple ceremony, in one of God’s houses. They had chosen the Old World white Protestant spired church, not only because Mirella’s paternal ancestors had founded the church, but because it was a symbol of the visible heritage they wanted to add to. What pleased them more was that the white clapboard church still carried an air of meager but sincere anarchy.
    It was an original symbol of man’s fight for religious freedom; of being pure in heart; of the kind of America, the New World, that to this day represents New England on calendars and Christmas cards. For Mirella and Adam, whose religious faith had drifted from Puritanism through a Protestantism which faded into Unitarianism, and who had abandoned that and every religious “ism” long ago for freedom to live and believe as they chose, there could have been no better site.
    Adam, with his gaze still on Rashid, smiled to himself when he thought of the disappointment in Rashid’s face whenthey had told him they wanted to be married in the simple white church on the small-town New England green.
    Rashid had tried every sort of persuasion to entice them to a wedding in Istanbul’s St. Sophia. Or, he had offered, they could be wed in the Basilica San Marco, in Venice. When, time after time, they would not give in to his wishes, he gave way, reduced his aspirations for them, and suggested St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and, with slightly downcast eyes, Sir Christopher Wren’s St. James Piccadilly. Somewhat annoyed with them for rejecting even those noble buildings, he conceded, if it was a small place of worship they desired, there was always the Madeleine in Paris. His Oriental mind simply could not understand that what they wanted was to make their vows to each other in a place restrained in adornment, a place whose spirit promised nothing but to allow their essential selves freedom to bathe in the inner light of one of God’s houses. When Rashid did at last accept their choice and their guest list, there had been nothing more for them to do. Rashid simply took command of their wedding.
    Adam was aware that he and Mirella never alluded between themselves to Rashid’s determination to be involved so completely in their wedding plans; nor to this being the first of many ways they would allow Rashid to take his place as the third person in their life together.
    Sheer nectar, Adam thought, as he touched his glass to Mirella’s and drank. Every morsel of food so far had been sheer ambrosia as well. He touched Mirella on the shoulder, then caressed her back, raised her hand and kissed it.
    He wanted her, more than ever now that she was his, now that he was hers. He became aroused at the very thought of their first coupling as man and wife. He bent forward and tucked his head under the brim of her hat and kissed her on the lips, bit her, none too lightly, wanting her to feel the pain of his desire. Then he kissed her mouth again with a tenderness that was as sweet as the nectar he imagined he drank.
    There was an unmistakable air of sensuality in the dining room; no one could possibly ignore it. It was everywhere, like the scent of an exotic perfume, and growing stronger, more exciting, as the breakfast continued. Rashid had done to perfection what he liked to do best — enchant, seduce, corrupt the senses, with beauty and pleasure. He was a master at it.No one in the room would dispute that. Every wedding guest was under his spell, and, methodically, as the afternoon wore on, he dazzled them with the joy of the occasion.
    Mirella and Adam rose from their chairs and together cut a slice of the wedding cake in front of them with a Queen Anne