Kissed by the Wave: A Forbidden Realm Novel

by Serena Gilley

  “It’s really nothing more than a human tradition,” he explained quickly. “A legal matter, and I agree it might sound confining and restrictive, but I promise that’s not what I’m asking. If you aren’t comfortable with it, of course I understand, but—”

  “I will marry you, Devin.”

  “What?”

  “It is the greatest thing you could ask of me; I can feel that in you and I am honored. It makes me so happy that you would want to be bound to me in that way!”

  “It won’t be easy, figuring out how to balance our lives,” he said, feeling like he owed her complete honesty at this point. “And who knows what changes we’ll have to make to do what’s best for our child.”

  “We’ll find a way. We have each other, Devin, and we have our wish. Surely knowing that makes you feel good.”

  “I feel good, all right,” he said, thrusting slowly inside her, determined to hang on to some shred of control.

  She moaned, wrapping her arms and legs even more tightly around him. The heat was intense. He tried to keep focused on giving her pleasure, but it wasn’t long before his own pleasure built up to wild proportions. He was gliding in and out of her as if he’d never had her before, as if he might never have her again. The surge of passion drove him halfway to madness.

  She called out his name, her fingers gripping his skin. That only urged him to drive harder, longer, deeper into her. It seemed he would keep up the pace for the rest of the night, but all at once the torrent of climax hit him. He throbbed and pulsated into her, the heat from his body burning off the cold droplets of sweat that had collected over his shoulders. His skin tingled in the air and he pulled her tight, cradling her for warmth as she began the throes of her own raging climax.

  She clawed at him, groaned, and uttered oaths to the waters around them. This was the most intense lovemaking he’d ever experienced in his life and he knew it was because of her. Because he loved her completely and because she also loved him. Lust and desire seemed petty compared to this, what their love had accomplished.

  There was no doubt in his mind that this kind of power could overcome anything that lay in store for them.

  “Together,” she whispered, sharing his thoughts.

  “Yes, Aliya, together. Wet or dry or hot or cold, whatever we do it will be together.”

  He watched her face. She smiled, her eyes sparkling and her skin glowing with the flush of their passion.

  “I have a feeling we’ll be doing it a lot,” she said. “You know how much I like being wet.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kyne waited on the deck of the boat for Raea. She stayed behind for some quiet words with Aliya, but he needed to be out of that room with all of its raging passions and breathe in some fresh air. Not that it helped much. Such close proximity to those half-drooling lovers had triggered every lustful response he had in him. It was going to take every ounce of his feeble self-control just to be able to fly once they were done here.

  Finally Raea emerged from the cabin. She was smiling her most enchanting smile and glowing even pinker than usual. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his and she drew in a deep breath, her feathered bodice pulled tight at her breasts. He tried to look away, but he couldn’t. Her satiny skin glistened in the last rays of amber sunset. She would feel so good against him, those breasts in his hands…

  By the Skies, he needed to get away. There was too much emotion, too much desire, too much wayward lust in the vicinity. He could barely breathe.

  “I’m glad things worked out for them,” she said.

  “So far,” he mumbled.

  “We’ll have to keep it from the council, of course, but I’m sure they’ll find a way. There’s time before the child is born to make plans. I’m sure they’ll figure out what to do.”

  Kyne nodded and moved away from her. “I hope so. The last thing I want is to get dragged further into this.”

  He could feel her glaring at him, but he stared out over the water. Her wings buzzed and he knew she was upset.

  “Really? After all of this, seeing them so happy and knowing they even have a child on the way, all you can think of is saving your own hide? Do you really love the Fairy Council that much that all you want is to make them happy? Can’t you care at all what happens to these two?”

  She’d moved close enough to him now that he could feel her body heat against his wings. He could feel Aliya and the human, too. They hadn’t even waited for the fairies to be off of this boat before they were back in that bed, groping and pushing and sucking and…by the Air, he needed to leave.

  But hell, where could he go? There would never be escape from this raging hot need, the pulsating ache he could never dare soothe. He didn’t bother with further pleasantries before turning his back on Raea and surging up into the chilled, lonely night air.

  He tried not to be happy about it, but he knew she was following him. If he could just get them away from that boat…away from the lust and the sighing and all those things Kyne knew he didn’t dare think about…maybe he could trust himself to have a conversation with Raea. The harder he flew and the farther away he got from the boat the more he knew the undeniable truth.

  His body was hard and desperate for Raea and it wasn’t simply because of that human. It was because he wanted Raea, and the minute he could get her alone, he intended to have her. For her own sake, he sped up to try to leave her behind.

  He wasn’t at all sorry that she was such a fast flier.

  * * *

  “By the Air, why are you in such a hurry?” Raea called, panting from working so hard to catch up to him, the jerk. He knew she was back here.

  “Stop following me,” he said, not bothering to slow down or to look at her.

  “You don’t own the sky. I can fly wherever I want.”

  “Well, you’d better start wanting to fly somewhere else.”

  “And if I don’t, what will you do?”

  They were over the shoreline now. Below them waves broke over a rocky beach. A tree-lined ridge made a dark horizon against the deepening blue of the night sky. Kyne hovered to a halt and whirled on her. She had to pull up hard to keep from crashing into him and for just a moment she was afraid. His eyes blazed with fire. But he took a deep breath and turned away, flapping off at a more leisurely pace in another direction.

  “There are some agricultural plots that I’m scheduled for tending.”

  “So you’re just going to ignore me?”

  He seemed to be trying very hard to pretend he didn’t even hear her. She followed, knowing he would hate that. But they had unfinished business and she was not going to leave things this way.

  “We need to decide what we’ll tell the council.”

  “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to figure this out together? I could help you explain about the dust, and—”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  He said it as if the idea disgusted him. Was that it, did she disgust him now? She’d dragged him into helping a human, so now he couldn’t stand to so much as look at her anymore. Well, that was fine. If he didn’t want to be friendly with her, she could live with that. She didn’t need a friend like him, anyway, with his lustful ways and dangerous background. She had plenty of other friends she’d much rather spend time with. Kyne wasn’t the only fairy on the cloud.

  He was the only one with such broad shoulders and those golden eyes, of course, but that wasn’t any big deal. Fairies weren’t so shallow as to put much stock in one another’s appearance. Kyne could go on being golden and huge and gorgeous. It meant nothing to her.

  All she cared about was keeping herself and her friends out of trouble.

  “So, I guess you’ve changed your mind about humans now,” she said after another few minutes of silence and tiresome following.

  “No. I haven’t. Why should I?”

  “Well, it was a little obvious you didn’t really mind helping out back there, not once y
ou realized Devin was more about honestly caring for Aliya than just…you know. You discovered humans have souls.”

  “Of course they have souls. No one ever said they didn’t. They just generally choose to ignore their souls, which makes them all the worse for it.”

  “Devin didn’t ignore his.”

  “He’s unusual. And you can’t tell me these were ordinary circumstances.”

  “Well, maybe not, but he could have gotten away from his responsibilities easily enough if he’d wanted to.”

  “Who’s to say he won’t do that next week, or next month?”

  “Why do you hate humans so much?” she asked.

  As expected, that got his attention. He stopped again and faced her.

  “You should know the answer to that.”

  “Well, I don’t. It seems like you should have more reason than any of us to understand humans, to relate to them.”

  “I understand them, all right. I understand completely. I know all about their weaknesses, their animal impulses. You think I can relate to that? You’re right. I can. And I hate it.”

  “You hate humans, or you hate yourself?”

  “I hate them. My mother was nearly destroyed because one of them couldn’t keep his filthy hands to himself. By the Skies, Raea, I have to live with that every day of my life. And you have to ask why I hate humans?”

  “So your mother wasn’t…she wasn’t a willing partner with your father?”

  “Of course not. She’d never willingly break the code that way. The human who fathered me used her and then abandoned her. I always hoped that wasn’t normal human behavior, that they aren’t all led by their lust and their passions.”

  Her heart ached for him. She could hear the raw pain in his voice as he laughed at himself before going on.

  “Why do you think I made that damn bet in the first place, Raea? I wanted proof there was hope for someone like me. But there isn’t. Humans are ruled by their desires and they use them to get what they want. That’s why you can never trust them.”

  “But you aren’t like that, Kyne. I trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  He was hovering very close now, his eyes burning her with their intensity. In an instant she believed he was right. She shouldn’t trust him. She shouldn’t even be here with him right now. Not because he was half human, but because that half of him didn’t disgust her.

  “You aren’t like the human who fathered you,” she assured him. “You’re not capable of such cruelty, Kyne.”

  “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of.”

  She almost didn’t hear him, his voice was so low. She had a pretty good idea what he meant by it, though. He was capable of all manner of forbidden things. The real question right now, she realized, was what was she capable of?

  “It’s time for us to go our own ways, Raea,” he announced as he dropped down to rest on a rocky outcropping just above the shore. “We’ve got a lot to do to get things back to normal.”

  “Things will never be normal again, Kyne. I think you know that.”

  “You should go now, Raea.”

  She sank down onto the rock beside him. “I don’t want to go now. I want to stay here, with you.”

  He moved quickly and caught her off guard. His hands fastened on her arms and pulled her to face him. She winced. Her skin was on fire where he touched her. She blinked into his blazing eyes, not sure what to say, what to do. Slowly, his grasp on her slackened, but the connection did not break. His thumb brushed softly over her arm, his hand trailing upward, making a path of tingling heat over her shoulder. She couldn’t move away; his touch was making her dizzy with sensation.

  “You should be worried right now, Raea. Be very worried.”

  “You don’t scare me,” she said and tried to sound like she meant it.

  “You don’t think I have reason to scare you?”

  “I understand you’re mad at me. Things got kind of messed up and I had to drag you in where you didn’t want to go. I’m sorry.”

  “You think that’s what this is about?”

  His golden eyes searched hers, then his gaze shifted to take in her hair and her shoulders and her clothes. She felt it as clearly as if it had been a caress. She tried to gather her thoughts enough to answer his question.

  “Um…isn’t it? I know what we did was wrong.”

  “Hell yes, it was wrong,” he said, still running his fingers over her skin, his gaze over her body. “Everything about it was wrong.”

  She tried to catch her breath but the air refused to cooperate. “And you don’t like wrong.”

  “No, Raea. I do like wrong. I like it very much, I’m afraid.”

  Slowly his eyes shifted back to her face. She’d been busy studying his lips, but now she met his gaze. It set her on fire inside. She knew exactly how to respond.

  “I’m afraid I like wrong, too.”

  His lips parted, but he didn’t speak. He was perfectly still, perfectly quiet. She matched his stare, his breathing, his slow, steady wing beats. He was waiting for her to pull away from him; she knew that. She wasn’t going anywhere, though. It was obvious what they both wanted.

  “I want to be wrong some more, Kyne,” she said.

  It was almost like begging. She didn’t care. Too much had happened to her today, she needed to understand all of it. If she had to, she was prepared to beg now.

  He didn’t make her stoop to that, thankfully. His hands slid around her, pinning her wings gently and pulling her close. She wrapped herself around him and felt the strong, churning muscles where his wings attached at the shoulder blades. He was fully magic, all fairy. So strong, yet so earthy. And so capable of doing what she wanted beyond all reason.

  He kissed her. She slid against him, opening her lips to his searching tongue. Kyne’s kisses tasted like summer. Like honey and the scent of ripening wheat. Like the heat from the sun on a day with no breeze. Like everything she could ever hope for and then some.

  She pressed her body against his length. His chest was solid, his abdomen tight with muscles, his thighs firm and sturdy. He was growing hard against her, too. She could feel his manhood almost as if there was nothing between them. As if his leather clothes and her feathered attire had faded away.

  She wanted to feel more of him, all of him. She wanted that now and nothing else around them mattered. She needed him and was eager to comply as he laid her back against the rock they sat on.

  Smoothed from eons of waves washing over, the gray rock shone white in the moonlight. It was still warm from the day’s sun. Kyne was stretched out next to her and pressing her close. She could give up this fight against what was forbidden and concentrate on what they both wanted. It would be heaven.

  Kyne was covering her, wrapping her inescapably in his arms and his wings. She let sensation rule her body. Sensation and Kyne. His hands were all over her now. His breath was labored. He kissed her almost violently, stroking, probing with his tongue, urging her to give herself to him.

  She gasped, hating the air she needed to breathe. It was a hindrance to kissing him. Yes, air was not her friend right now. There was too much of it between them. She wanted to merge, wanted her whole body to be one with Kyne. Nothing between them. Flesh joining flesh.

  This thing they were caught up in had nothing of the air to it. This was pure earth. Flesh, dust, human. Foreign and forbidden to her, to them both. But undeniable.

  And then, she felt him. His manhood against her skin. He was pressed against her where her feathered tunic had been pushed aside. There was no barrier. They could join.

  She arched toward him, eager for the union.

  “No,” he breathed in her ear. “We don’t know what this will do to us. We can’t…”

  He was trying to push her away, but she fought him.

  “Please,” she said, her fingers tightening on his clothing. “I need this. I need you.”

  “But what if…”

  “It’s too late for tha
t. Too late to worry. I need you, Kyne.”

  Her hands found their way inside his tunic. Ah, he was so warm to her touch. And there was a light cover of hair on him, his chest, his abdomen, lower. She’d never known a fairy with body hair. It was fascinating. She dug her fingers into it and pulled herself closer to him.

  He groaned and kissed her as if he were devouring his last meal. She pulled at his clothing, and he pulled at hers, until somehow they were free of the restraints that separated them. Naked. She touched him everywhere.

  He felt so good to her. She traced the taut muscles on his back, the sculpted curve of his butt. Oh, she loved how he felt against her body. She wiggled closer still, until he was pressing his hardened shaft solidly against the apex of her being. It thrilled and terrified her all at the same time.

  “I want you so bad,” he murmured and she recognized the strain in his voice.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I want you, too.”

  He slid his warm hands over her body, brushing between them until his fingers found her tingling nipples. He gave gentle pressure there, testing them, dipping to taste them. She writhed with inexplicable pleasure. How could this just keep getting better? It was almost as if they were dragging themselves up a never-ending mountain, compelled by some force and desperate to reach the pinnacle. She had no idea what awaited them there, but she needed it desperately.

  She needed him desperately. Something was building up inside her and she somehow knew only Kyne could release it, bring her the satisfaction she thought she might die without. Was he feeling it, too?

  She thought so. His breathing sounded rugged, hoarse. He trailed kisses over her skin, but she could feel his control fading fast. His movements were becoming labored, his kisses more demanding. He wanted release as franticly as she did.

  “Kyne,” she said and her voice was almost inaudible. “Come inside me, Kyne.”

  He moaned against her. “Oh God, Raea. I want to, but it’s wrong.”