By the Magic of Starlight (The Forbidden Realm) by Serena Gilley Read Free Book Online

are, so I don’t think they have a clue, either. It’s just… really, Raea, you’ve got to stop staring at me like that.”
    “Well, you aren’t letting me touch you, so staring is all that I can do.”
    It was the most difficult thing imaginable to see the desire in her eyes and hear the yearning in her voice, yet not welcome her back into his arms. She needed to know what she was dealing with, though, so he forced himself to continue.
    “You need to be listening. I have to tell you the truth.”
    “Truth? I hardly think there are any secrets left between us, Kyne.”
    “There is. A big one.”
    “That’s hardly a secret to me.”
    “No, there’s more. What you think you know… what we did that night… Do you remember it?”
    “Of course! I’ve tried all this time to forget it, but I can’t. What you did that night changed me, Kyne. I only want more and more of it, even though I know it’s wrong.”
    Yes, he was afraid of that. She’d lived her life without any temptation, without experiencing the passion he struggled against every day. He should have known that luring her into his arms would only make her want more. It was why there were such strict laws against this sort of thing to begin with; magic and passion were an intoxicating mix. There were good reasons such things had been forbidden for so long. He should never have been so selfish to drag her into this with him.
    “I’m sorry, Raea. This is why Co-Mingling is such a serious offense.”
    “Co-Mingling? But that is not what we’ve done, Kyne. Yes, giving in to passion as we have is wrong—I’m well aware of that—but it isn’t nearly as bad as actual Co-Mingling. Swift was wrong when he accused you. You haven’t done that.”
    And now she would hear the truth. He took a long breath before delivering the blow.
    “But you have.”
    Her pink brow furrowed adorably and she bit her lip in confusion. “What? No I haven’t. I’ve never done anything like that with a human.”
    “But you’ve done it with me, Raea.”
    “And you are a fairy.”
    “Not when I make love.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t you remember? When we did it before, we’d been helping that human. We’d used Sizing Dust to take on human form.”
    “Yes, but that was merely for convenience. We had to become human size to communicate with them, to accomplish our task. We weren’t Co-Mingling with them. By the Skies, Kyne. Why are you so stressed about this?”
    “Because you thought it was simply the effect of the dust that kept me that size when we made love, Raea.”
    “Yes, and I was still human-sized, too. That doesn’t mean—”
    “You were that size because of magic, Raea. I was that size because it is my natural form when I… well, when I make love.”
    “What? But back at the Council Hall we were making love, and you’re still a normal-size fairy. All right, maybe you’ve grown in one particular area, and maybe you are a little bit taller and maybe your shoulders are a little wider than usual, but you still look like a fairy to me.”
    She wasn’t making this easy for him. Why was it taking her so long to grasp what he was trying to tell her? He guessed he’d just have to blurt it out in all its sordid detail. Then she could hate him and regret coming to his rescue tonight.
    “It doesn’t exactly happen when I make love, Raea, it happens only when I
come
. When I reach climax. It doesn’t matter what form I’m in then, I always become huge.”
    “Always? You mean, you do this a lot? You have sex with other fairies everywhere you go?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “With humans, then. You
are
guilty of Co-Mingling!”
    “No, not with humans, either,” he said, and stopped her before she could go on to ask any more embarrassing questions. “And not farm animals or mermaids or anything like that. I… I’ve found ways to release the tension that builds up over time.”
    “Tension?”
    “What we were feeling a couple seconds ago—
that
sort of