Free By the Magic of Starlight (The Forbidden Realm) by Serena Gilley Page A

could.
    He was sprawled on the ground before her, totally spent, yet he pushed himself up on his elbows. His eyes searched the air. “Are you… are you all right, Raea? Where are you?”
    “I’m here. I’m fine,” she assured him. “You brought me to climax again, you know.”
    He smiled, his head dropped back down onto the soft layers of the forest floor. His chest still rose and fell rapidly but he wore a smug, lethargic smile of satisfaction. “I told you I’m something.”
    She studied his huge, human form and realized it truly made no difference whether he was a fairy or a human. She wanted him. She wanted him for
who
he was, not simply
what
he was. This was a new feeling for her, and one she rather enjoyed.
    “If we had Sizing Dust, you could be something again,” she said, only half teasing.
    His laughter rumbled low in his chest. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”
    “I’m afraid I can’t get any more dust until tomorrow,” she admitted. “But I will. I’ll say I need it for some special task or something. I’ll get creative.”
    “You’re certainly good at that.”
    “And we can come back here! We can meet by these rocks and do this again.”
    “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Raea.”
    “Of course it is. You still want me, don’t you?”
    “By the Skies, how can you ask that? It’s just… we have to think of the future. Our future.”
    “Do we have a future, Kyne?”
    “I hope so, Raea. Don’t you? Haven’t you thought about what this means, what there is between us other than the raging hot sex?”
    She smiled, then remembered he couldn’t see that so she let a nervous giggle escape her. “I don’t know, all of this is so new for me. How can I trust what I feel when I don’t even know what’s real and what is caused by this strange machinery and its effect on us?”
    “What do you feel right now, Raea? What does your instinct tell you?”
    “I don’t know; I’m all jumpy and tingling inside. It’s probably from the machinery; it must be transmitting some kind of energy through this outcropping here.”
    “Are you sure?” he asked, sitting up and running his hand over the smooth surface of the large rock.
    “I don’t know what it is, but the energy warms the rocks and…” She ran her own hands over the rock as she spoke and suddenly realized something had changed.
    “Kyne… the rocks. They’re not warm anymore.”
    “I know. And the sound we noticed before seems to have stopped, too. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so clearheaded again, but—” He paused, cocking his head to listen for a moment.
    Then he swore. “Someone’s coming this way again.”

Chapter Five
    Raea was glad her invisibility wish was still working. She could hear the footsteps crunching through the leaves. It sounded painfully familiar, but this time she wasn’t weak and helpless. She was ready to zip up into the trees. Unfortunately, she realized Kyne would not be able to join her.
    He was still human.
    True, he still had his wings—they were a part of him, after all—but given his size and his bulk and his apparent lack of magic, there was no way he could use them for actual flight. He was stranded on the ground, fully visible to anyone who might come by here.
    And he was naked. He was beautifully, temptingly naked. She flew to him and perched on his arm, tugging at his hand and shoving at him, trying to get him up.
    “Come on. Get out of here. He’s going to find you.”
    He laughed at her feeble attempts to move him, but he did as she commanded. He sat up and shifted position. By the Skies, but he was remarkable. She had been half afraid the sight of him as a human would destroy her craving for him, but it didn’t. She still wanted him. Perhaps even more!
    First, though, she wanted him safely away from here.
    “All right,” he said, as she tried to push him up to stand on his feet. “Watch out. I don’t want to step on you.”
    “I’ll stay clear,” she assured him,