Phoenix Alight Read online

  “I’m not a child,” he said through his teeth. He wished he could just get up and leave. He didn’t have the energy for a real fight.

  “Then stop being childish. I’m a phoenix. I sing. Deal with it.” She stared him down.

  He felt those blue eyes like lasers on his own. He tried to explain. “I’m cool with your singing – right up until you start using it to manipulate me.”

  “I’m not manipulating you, jackass. I’m healing you. That too is my gift.” She set her jaw and glared at him.

  He couldn’t muster an argument. But that didn’t mean he wanted her walking in and out of his head without so much as knocking. “Maybe I’d rather heal slowly than have you in my head.”

  “I wouldn’t enter that cesspit if I could.” Her voice rose.

  He watched her stomp off to the sink and scrape her plate into the composter. She was rigid with outrage. But at least she wasn’t treating him like an invalid any more.

  “Is that why you turned down my Gift of Immortality?” Her voice shook. She left her back to him.

  “I turned it down, because I’m a goddamned bear. I offered you a bear bond. But no, Frankie D’Angelo has to have everything her own way.”

  That got her marching back to him. She leaned over the table, arms spread, palms flat. Her glorious rack heaved. His tongue was suddenly dry. “You turned down immortality because you thought I was inflexible?” She was incredulous. Incandescent with rage.

  “And haven’t you been congratulating yourself for the last week that I did, D’Angelo? Otherwise you’d be stuck married to a fricking cripple. A cripple with no job and no prospects.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Stuck with a cripple? Stuck with a cripple?” She was hissing like a tea kettle, he fully expected to see steam coming out of her mouth. But at least the humming had vanished. “I gotta tell you, Bear Boy, that if that’s your idea of true love, it’s no wonder you turned down your chance at a Phoenix Bond.”

  “I only meant that you must be glad you’re not married to a hamstrung gimp.”

  “Gimp? Gimp? What sort of language is that? What century are you from, Bear Boy? No, I’m not rejoicing because I avoided having an injured mate. What part of fated don’t you understand?” Her voice broke. “Married. Not married. Transformed. Not transformed. It’s all the same, you idiot. You are part of my soul. My problem is that you don’t reciprocate my feelings.”

  She pushed up and stood military straight. “Finish your supper, Airman. It’s bedtime.”

  Damn right. He reached out an arm and yanked her onto his lap. Shut her up in the most effective way he knew. She didn’t even struggle, she simply surrendered to his kiss and then fought him for control. That was his phoenix. Even in defeat, she was a warrior.

  Part of her soul? She certainly tasted as if she were part of his. The thought made his head spin. He held on to her in case she might evaporate as all his fantasies of her did. She clung just as tightly and tangled her tongue with his. The frenzied mating was agony and bliss. His injured leg protested her weight even as his arms rejoiced to hold her.

  What he needed to do was carry her off to bed. But he couldn’t stand up unassisted let alone with six-foot-three of muscular female in his arms. He angled her head so he could explore her mouth better, and traced one ear with his finger, before drawing it down the side of her neck. The little caress still made her crazy. Her scent bloomed. She was fragrant with desire.

  Just as he was about to cry uncle, and admit he could no longer support her weight, she slid backward and gracefully swung one long leg clear of his torso. When he got his breath back, her soft, warm breasts were pressed into his chest. Her ripe ass was two inches clear of his lap and her legs were firmly planted on the floor either side of his chair.

  She leaned in and took possession of his mouth again. He cupped her butt and squeezed. Let go. Squeezed again. Found the rhythm that drove her wild. It had been a lifetime since he had had a handful of Frankie D’Angelo’s delectable backside and he might never have one again. She swiveled her hips in response to his massage and filled the air with the heady perfume of her arousal.

  His breath was a rasp in the air. Hers was thick but steady. Her tongue teased the roof of his mouth, withdrew, traced the outline of his lips, catching on the freshly shaven skin. How could such a tender caress make him so hard? His woody was trying to climb out of his jeans.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cameron~

  “Ride me,” he begged. In all his dreams, she rode him hard and squeezed the last drop of life from him. Let him fill her with cub.

  There was something he needed to do. Something he had to remember. But she laughed into his mouth and tormented the delicate skin behind his lips, seized his questing tongue and sucked in exactly the rhythm he wanted on his throbbing cock.

  He felt her confident hands unbuckling his belt, unsnapping his jeans. He used his good leg to lift himself off the chair seat. She pushed his jeans down to his knees. His shorts went with them.

  “Ride me, babe,” he begged again.

  She left his mouth. Ran her hands down his chest to his cock and grasped it. “Don’t be so impatient,” she chided.

  “Frankie!”

  She licked the cap of his cock. Sucked up the drops of semen gathered there. Ran her tongue all around the hypersensitive edge. Reversed. Drove him mad. Her breasts were touching his knees. She was kneeling before him. All his dreams come true.

  “Frankie,” he groaned.

  “Relax, Bear Boy.” She cupped his balls with one hand, squeezed tenderly and found the ultra-sensitive skin at the base of his cock. Damped her finger in his semen, tap danced on that exquisitely responsive spot. His balls clenched tight. His cock leapt like a trout.

  The warm wetness of her tongue traveled from base to cap, painting designs on his throbbing dick. She stopped to nibble. Gave him another lick. He grew more desperate. His fingers twined in her hair, trying to convert her teasing into satisfaction.

  “I’m not a goddamned ice cream cone,” he muttered.

  “Too hot. Too hard.” Her murmur was an intense vibration against his dick. “Too solid.”

  She took him into her mouth. Nothing had ever felt this good. He was chanting her name now. She sucked him as she had sucked his tongue. Her fingers tickled his balls, tugged on the hair, pressed in the spot between them. Her pace increased. His tension ratcheted higher and then he was flying in the sweetest, strongest release he had ever known.

  His triumphant bellow filled the kitchen and resonated with her victory song. He clutched her against his chest. “Mine.” He claimed his mate. “Mine.”

  * * *

  Frankie~

  They had fought tooth and nail before about her ‘mind control’ talent as Cam chose to interpret it. Often and bitterly. What she had taken as proof positive that he was her one true love, he had seen as her seeking to manipulate him. He had never understood that her songs were as much a part of her as her ability to fly.

  Like all phoenixes, she had a song for every activity. Most of the time she sang inaudibly. But Cam was her mate. He could hear her. Always. Even if no one else could. And the more she sang to him, as opposed to around him, well, the more her singing influenced him. Naturally.

  It wasn’t as if she could hypnotize him or anyone else. At best, her talent allowed her to influence others. She couldn’t get anyone to do anything they were not already disposed to do. When she sang her healing tunes to Cam, his immune system responded. His brain waves normalized. Not because she was controlling him, but because his body naturally wanted to return to normal. His normal. Not hers.

  Her paranormal power to heal allowed her to reset the body’s own mechanisms. The perfectly ordinary human biological processes that controlled the body’s circadian rhythms, its temperature regulation, its digestive processes, sense of balance. Bodies craved homeostasis. Bodies that strayed too far from the set point laid down by biology no longer worked.

  Of course,
the profound and powerful response Cam experienced when she sang was a side effect of their deep and transcendent connection. Whether he wanted to be or not, they were bound forever. When she sang his body listened. Moreover, her singing medicine was mutual. It affected her senses both paranormal and normal just as profoundly.

  Even now, satiated and asleep, his cells were still resonating to the aftershocks of their mutual song. Had they achieved orgasm together, the effect would have been still more powerful. As it was, holding him while the ripples of his climax shook their bodies had had an exhausting and debilitating effect on her.

  Locked together for what felt like eternity, she had shared some of the horrors of his last mission. Experienced his pain, felt his certainty that death loomed. Watched his bear die. No wonder he was dispirited. No wonder he was taking refuge in painkillers and psychotropics. She felt infected by his malaise. Weakened in body and soul.

  She needed to rest and then to see what she could do to heal them both. But right now she needed to get off her knees and get this bear to bed. She shook her head at her zonked-out man. Right about now, hypnosis sounded wonderful. She hummed a marching tune that got him more or less upright and allowed her to pull his pants back up.

  She was breathing hard when she finally got him into his bed. He flopped back against the pillows, not properly awake and smiled that heartbreaking smile of his. There ought to be a law against Southern boys. She longed to collapse beside him and sleep herself. But he still needed his meds, and she had to contemplate the nightmare they had shared.

  She straightened up the kitchen, did the dishes, fed Cam his meds and tucked him in. “Good night.” She kissed him, but he did not stir. Just as he had not really awakened when she gave him his pills.

  Puttering had given her the time and space to decide what to do to heal them both. Step one was to get herself into greater phoenix. She was strongest in greater. She went outside where the moon was rising, and the stars spangled the darkening sky. She stripped to her skin and took wing.

  Tonight was no time for lesser phoenix. She needed the boost that flying in full phoenix morph always provided. Immediately she felt less stressed. Her lungs drew air in, her bones filled with oxygen, her blood soaked it up. Every muscle relaxed. Her mind, however, still raced. She still felt twitchy and fearful. She flew higher. Faster.

  She flew circuits around the family compound. In full phoenix it took no time at all to cover the perimeter of a hundred acres. After all, she had a twenty-two-foot wingspan and could fly at the speed of sound. Not that she was creating a sonic boom tonight. That was only for warfare. No need to disturb the family. Or the neighbors.

  She had no fear that anyone would see her and take fright at a flaming bird silhouetted against the stars. Ordinary mortals could not see the wavelengths of the paranormal light given off by her plumage. They literally could not see her. Any more than they could hear her song.

  No one else was in the air. It was just her and the moon and the stars. Mom and Dad must be sleeping. Lincoln and Beverly staying home with Harding. The Texas landscape spread out in the moonlight was pure beauty. The stream rippled and babbled and sang her the song of home and peace. The spring foliage stirred in the gentle breeze, filling the air with fragrance. All she needed was her mate. But bears could not fly. And her bear was grounded in more ways than one.

  It was time to take out those horrific images she had shared with Cam and look at them, one by one. She didn’t want to, but nothing was ever achieved by cowardice. Terrible things had happened in Syria to Cam and his team. Terrible things happened in war. But how much of what he had unwittingly inflicted on her was reality, and how much sheer delusion?

  Earlier today Cam had truly believed that he had abandoned Sgt. Onesalt to die in solitary agony. The fact that he had brought Onesalt back to safety and saved his life had not been part of his memories. Which was one helluva difference. How far could she trust the vision he had thrust into her mind?

  Not far at all.

  Which didn’t mean that it was valueless. Cam’s memories, true or false, graphically revealed the full atrocity that oppressed his spirits. He believed every aspect to be true. Part of psychological recovery from trauma was relearning to distinguish reality from delusion. Depression convinced the brain that everything was catastrophic. By making bad worse, Cam had merely followed a depressive pattern.

  His nightmares had frightened, nauseated, and distressed her. She felt tainted body and soul. Physically and mentally unwell. She was going to have to overcome the horror of those ugly images herself, if she was to help Cam to see them as morbid exaggerations of a truly awful reality. How she could help him to forget the truth, she still had no clue.

  Far below her, a pack of wolves stalked a herd of sleeping pronghorns, startling them into stampeding into their ambush. Some ranchers despised wolves. But her family accepted that if the ecosystem was to flourish, it needed apex predators.

  Without the wolves, the antelope would eat Grape Creek bare. The stream would disappear into mud holes as its banks eroded. Coyotes would move in and eat all the mice and shrews. Unable to feed their young, the owls and hawks would move on. Without bushes, the songbirds would nest elsewhere. Nature wasn’t sweet or charming, but when a balance was reached, it certainly was beautiful.

  Each circuit over the D’Angelo land was easier than the last. As it always did, flying had calmed her. Helped her to sort out her mind. Restored her to herself. Miles away she sensed that Cam had responded to the lullaby she hadn’t realized she was singing. His brain waves had steadied. He had slipped into deep and restorative sleep. And she had felt the effect. Her own anxiety was soothed. She now knew precisely what she needed to do.

  It was obvious that Cam’s biggest problem was that he believed his bear was dead. Equally obvious was that if that was the case, Cam would be dead. His bear wasn’t a separate entity, but a morph. Nothing that had occurred during that battle could have altered his genetics and robbed him of his bear. Any more than it had robbed him of his soul.

  He had tried, or believed he had tried, to take bear in the desert, and failed. He had tried again when he had first come to Grape Creek. Again he had failed. That had to be shattering to a man who had been shifting since puberty. Like any male shifter, his sense of self, of manhood, was strongly tied to his bear. As her sense of self was tied to her phoenix.

  But he was a genetic bear. His DNA hadn’t altered. What was going on? It probably all stemmed from that brain injury. Modern weapons created shock waves that rattled the brain catastrophically. His erratic brain waves were both inhibiting normal muscle control – hence the shaking and the stuttering – and sucking up huge amounts of energy.

  Simply put, Cam’s brain had to use too much energy just to run his respiratory and circulatory systems. He had nothing left over for sleep or healing, let alone shifting. At the rate he was going, it might be years before he was well again. Maybe never. He needed a complete reset. She had no choice. She was going to make that stubborn bear swallow the Egg of Immortality.

  Her leave would soon be up. They had no time to dither around while she tried to persuade her knucklehead to do what was best for him. With this tight timeline, she had no choice in what to do, or where to go. The volcanic fields of New Mexico were the closest source of living lava. So that was where she would go.

  In greater phoenix, she could get to the Balderas Volcanic Field, harvest a scrap of molten rock, and be back pouring orange juice for Bear Boy when he woke up. Suiting action to thought, she wheeled in the sky and flew northwest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cameron~

  He knew he was awake even though he couldn’t move a muscle. Paranormal light illuminated the bedroom with dazzling radiance. It emanated from the ginormous bird crouched at the end of his bed. Its great crested head glowed with a rainbow of colors with no names. Its huge curved beak was opened. A heartrending song poured out of that brazen beak, saturating the air with crystal notes
.

  It wasn’t just that the song was loud. Although it was. At least, he thought it was. It drowned all his senses, not just his hearing. He felt it in his immobile body. In his blood. Inside his head. It stirred his heart. Calmed his mind. Each hair vibrated in harmony with the melody. His fingernails and toenails buzzed gently. Every cell seemed to resonate.

  He couldn’t make out the words. Were there words? He was borne away on a powerful sea of sound. Wave after wave of beauty and peace. The music reached a crescendo, his mind gave way before it. He let go and allowed himself to become one with the song and the singer.

  Out on the paranormal plane, he soared away.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Frankie~

  To her phoenix vision the Valles Caldera of the Balderas Volcanic Field glowed as if painted with phosphorescent dye. Although the volcanoes of New Mexico were the most abundant of any state, the last time one had erupted was 3,000 years ago. A long time in human terms, or even in phoenix time, but only an eye-blink of geologic time. One day they would once again blow and transform the land. But not tonight.

  The Balderas Volcanic Field was home to many hot springs. Some sacred to the Native Americans who lived near them. Some slated to be tapped for their geothermal potential. Some deep underground and known only to phoenixes. In adolescence, she and her siblings had accompanied their parents to this area to learn to do aerial reconnaissance as well as to play in the hot springs.

  The geothermal heat of the region had called to their newly emerging phoenix senses. Several times they had visited one of the hot underground springs and plunged into the superheated water as if it were the water-slide at a theme park. It had delivered something of the same thrill.

  The scalding water could not, of course, harm them or their phoenix plumage. But the heat also contained paranormal energy that had buzzed all their senses. More than once, Mom and Dad had had to drag her and Eleanor out half-drunk with the volcanic energy.