Free More Blazing Bedtime Stories: Once Upon a Mattress by Julie Leto, Leslie Kelly

his mouth to his hands to that big ridge against the seam of his jeans said he was dying to screw her brains out?
    Penny had never read fairy tales as a kid, but that didn’t mean she had no imagination. While she might not believe in unicorns or fairies, she was open to other possibilities. Her good instincts had told her on occasion that she was meeting someone…different. Out of place.
    Once, at around age eight, she’d come home early and found her father talking to a strange-looking man, small of stature, long of face. She had immediately felt that he didn’t belong here. Not just in Louisiana, but anywhere she’d ever known.
    There had been other occasions. Only a few, but each time, her inner voice told her she was meeting an outsider walking a lonely path where he did not, could not, ever fit in.
    She saw that now in Lucas Wolf. Maybe she’d seen it from the start, but her attraction had kept her from dwellingon it. Penny was still attracted. But now she was determined to know more.
    “I asked you something earlier,” she said, piercing him with a stare. “I’m asking again, and I want to know the truth.”
    He adjusted the burner on the stove, then turned to give her his full attention. She thought she heard a sigh, as if he’d resigned himself to something unpleasant. And for a second, she almost didn’t want him to answer.
    Instinct told her the truth might be harder to handle than the curiosity. But curiosity won out.
    “Tell me, Mr. Wolf. Who are you?” She took one small step closer. “Who are you, really? ”
    He didn’t move, never shifted his gaze. Instead, after the slightest hesitation, he baldly answered her question.
    “My name is Lucas Wolf. I am a lawman from Elatyria, a place you’ve probably considered fictional all your life. I’m one-quarter Wolf. And I’ve been hired by a queen to find you and bring you back to Riverdale.”
    She didn’t respond. Didn’t gasp. Didn’t laugh in his face.
    To be honest, she didn’t react at all for a second. She merely stared at him, noting the stone-cold seriousness of his expression, replaying his voice in her head, trying to decide if he was delusional or merely pulling her chain.
    Finally, though, she had to admit he wasn’t playing some crazy joke. He might be nuttier than a jar of Skippy, but he believed what he was saying.
    “Okay,” she muttered, putting an end to an internal debate over whether she should call 911 or run out into the night. Doing neither, she instead walked over to open a kitchen cabinet and said, “I think we’re going to need some tequila to get through the rest of this conversation.”
     
    H E KNEW from experience that this tequila she craved was a weak brew. Yet it seemed to brace the princess. Before she even opened her mouth to discuss the matter, she tossed back two small shots of the stuff. She shivered once, then dove right in.
    “You’re an escaped mental patient, right? Damn, I knew it.”
    He merely smiled.
    “Come on, you can’t expect me to believe this.”
    “I don’t expect you to, which is why I wanted to take you and show you the proof rather than trying to explain it.”
    “Take me where, to this imaginary place called Riverdale? Or is it Elatyria?”
    “Riverdale is a territory, what you’d call a country. Like these United States. It exists in the world of Elatyria, which borders this one that you call Earth.”
    “Oh, right.” Sarcasm saturated her words. She was humoring him. “You’re from another planet?”
    “Hardly. Just because you Earth dwellers have explored space doesn’t mean you know all there is to know about this world.”
    She merely stared.
    Trying to put it simply, in the terms he’d first heard a few years ago when his completely unknown half-brother, Hunter, had come looking for him, he explained. “Think of it like this. Two lands occupying the same space, only…”
    She interrupted again with a snap of her fingers and a grin. “Wait. You’re telling me