Phoenix Alight Page 18

  More romantic than fighting blazing hyenas? His deep masculine laughter lifted her spirits higher even than victory had.

  Way, way more romantic. The magma flow is right beneath us. Be careful, my love. The psychic draw is tremendous. You don’t want to give in to the temptation to meld with the earth’s core. I need you.

  Warning heard. I’ll be careful. You nearly succumbed last time.

  I knew you had felt it with me! But I was strong. I came back to you.

  Together we will be twice as strong.

  Always and forever.

  The magma stream glowed as potently as it had before, but it no longer had the same allure for her. She was a fully mated phoenix who had much love to experience before she merged with the eternal fire. She only wanted to feast on the drops of molten rock that spewed as bubbles broke. She and Cameron swooped and dived like swallows chasing bugs on a summer evening.

  The taste isn’t much, but the heat grows on you. How come we can see this far down? There can’t possibly be visible light down here.

  Paranormal radiation glows in a frequency our phoenix eyes process as visible light. You know, lover, I think I might be addicted to lava.

  You’re full. So am I. What about that drink you promised me?

  Follow me. She grabbed a last beakful of lava to make a new Egg of Immortality for Cameron. I know a hot spring that will rock your soul.

  Are you sure we should go soak in the tipsy pool?

  I’m sure. The hot spring is a little intoxicating, but also refreshing. We need to preen and get our plumage in shape for the outward journey. And I can’t think of a more romantic spot to transform my mate.

  I’m a phoenix. We can communicate telepathically, my darling. What’s left?

  Greater phoenix.

  I seem able to keep up with you in lesser.

  There is nothing like being a huge bird of prey able to soar in a gale. Humor me, Bear Boy.

  But I’m not a bear. Not anymore. His sadness was palpable.

  You’ll always be a bear to me.

  And then they were in the hot spring cave. The invigorating steam rising from the turquoise water enveloped them in its healing balm.

  This cave is beyond beautiful. And the hot spring really rocks. I can’t wait to swim.

  I know. Romantic?

  Totally romantic. His rich chuckle made her breastbone tingle.

  We need to be in human for the ritual.

  I can only try, my love. But I still haven’t figured out how I got into phoenix. Human may be more than I can manage on command.

  You can do it.

  She landed on the edge of the pool and swiftly returned to human. She styled for Cameron while he figured out how to transform back into a man. Might as well give him an incentive to hurry.

  He took much longer than she had, but she had been practicing for years. At first only his legs cooperated with his mind, while his head, arms and torso remained feathery. But at last they were both naked, standing on the edge of the pool, while the fragrant steam eddied about them.

  She held out her hand and he clasped it. “Shall we?”

  “How do we get back in? Is it safe to get into water that hot?”

  “I did fine in human before.” She tugged on his hand.

  “Can we dive in?”

  Some of his caution seemed to have rubbed off. “Best not to,” she said. “I’ve never entered except in phoenix. Let’s try walking down the slope.”

  Holding hands they began their descent. The steepness of the sides defeated them and they half fell, half jumped into the water. “Delicious,” he said gulping great mouthfuls. “I feel as if I have never drunk before.”

  “You never have had water like this. Be careful, you’ll be stoned if you don’t watch out.”

  “I already am. Drunk on passion. Drunk on you. I can never decide if you are sexier in leathers or in your own skin.” He caught her around the waist and pulled her close against his fully aroused body. They floated breast to breast enjoying the hot water eddying around them as well as the skin to skin contact.

  “You’re sexy either way,” she replied. “How are you feeling?” She examined his aura. The waves seemed to pulse rhythmically and the flat-lined areas were fleshed out again. Although there were now oscillations that she had never seen before. She didn’t know what that meant.

  “Grand. Ready to make love all night. Well, at least until we crash.” He kissed her.

  She let herself slip away on the tide of Cam’s passion. Returned his excited exploration with interest. Soon they were both panting and her face was damp with perspiration. She pulled away slightly. “How’s the knee?”

  He bent it experimentally. “Fine. Better than fine. Feels like the other one. Shift. You don’t suppose all these transformations have replaced the artificial joint with real bone and cartilage? That’ll take some explaining to the military.”

  She laughed for sheer joy. “Seems unlikely. But it has probably restored the muscles that were cut to insert the metal ball and socket.” She dove beneath the water and ran her hands over his thighs. They were twin pillars of muscle, lightly covered in golden curls that made her mouth water and her pulse race. She gave his balls a little squeeze and came up for air.

  He grabbed her. “Let’s go.”

  She shared his urgency. This was no time for languid stroking and gentle caresses. She wanted to slake her passions immediately. She knew her feelings were a volatile compound of the post-battle buzz, the electric atmosphere of the pool cavern, and Cam. She wanted release, but mostly she wanted to share herself with her other half.

  “Damn straight,” he growled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Frankie~

  Cam was never a rough lover. But he was a big, passionate man. And she had never known him to be this turned on. His excitement intensified her own as though they were amplifying each other’s desire. As undoubtedly they were.

  “I want to throw you down and take you until I don’t know where you begin and I end.”

  “I don’t think I would enjoy being between a rock and a hard place.” She reached down and gave his cock an encouraging squeeze.

  He lifted her by the waist. “Think we can stay afloat?”

  “We can only try.” She wound her legs around his muscular waist and dug her heels into the hollow of his buttocks and pressed into the hard muscle. They bobbed around in the water. Frankie rubbed her open sex against his furry six-pack. “Works for me,” she teased, as his belly curls stimulated her clit and her whole pussy clenched in anticipation.

  His laughter was a great boom of sheer joy. “You smell ready,” he rumbled into her neck.

  She was ready. But she didn’t want this moment over too soon. “Work for it, Bear Boy,” she ordered.

  A big hand hoisted her left buttock and made a space for his hand to roam. Three fingers spread her folds and surged inside. She felt soft and swollen. And the hot water from the spring added to the excitement of being touched by Cameron, as if it was intoxicating her from the inside. Or perhaps that was his fingers. Cameron’s fingers.

  “I don’t want your juices watered down,” he whispered gruffly. “I want you slick and slippery so I can ram my cock right up to your womb.”

  His crude talk made her hotter. So did the delicate way he pinched her folds and then her clit. She tried to hold back. But this was Cam. They were mated. Her passage began to convulse. Even before her climax hit, he was thrusting upward. They sank like stones. He kicked hard and they shot to the surface.

  Frankie gripped his hips with her thighs. He thrust again. They dropped beneath the water. He propelled them upward. Their kisses were brief, interrupted by plunging and breaching. The water lapped around their bodies supporting and sucking. It was as invigorating as a carnival ride. Strenuous. Sensual. Sacred. Spiced with danger.

  They played their game like the vigorous athletes they both were. Reveling in the sensation of cock rubbing against swollen tissues.
Of pussy clamping hard on dick. Sharing laughing, happy kisses as they rose and fell beneath the turquoise water. Cam was sweating. So was she. It only added to the experience. This was passion at its most elemental and rapturous.

  “Now,” Cam said. He gave a last mighty stroke.

  She gripped him so tightly with her vagina that she felt his climax as if it was her own. They sank languorously beneath the splashing water. Cam was utterly relaxed within the circle of her arms. Motionless, except for his favorite organ which was pumping into her. Her turn. She kicked hard and raised them to the surface.

  Cam took a great gasping breath. His face was a mask of repletion. He hugged her against his heart so that his chest hair scoured her tender nipples. She felt his aftershocks meld with her own. Breathed in perfect synchrony with him. Met him out on the paranormal plane in swooning ecstasy.

  They floated together, spent but not tired. Just filled with an aching tenderness that could only be satisfied by skin to skin contact. Inside her his cock began to stiffen and grow once more. She circled her hips in a small experimental wiggle. It was a tight fit. But his semen had lubed her up nicely. She wiggled some more. Lightning streaked through her and into him – judging by the way he bucked in her arms.

  He rested his forehead against hers. “What have you done to me, Phoenix?”

  “Must be the hot springs. Or the lava.”

  “Nope. It’s you. It feels as if my body and yours are one. As if your swollen pussy and my dick are magnets. How is this even possible?” His deep voice was awestruck.

  The sheer blissful wonder of it suffused her. She shimmied around him. “Let’s not waste this.”

  “Wouldn’t want to squander our strength,” he returned. “Do you think we get to skip the part where we crash?”

  “You mean after orgasm?”

  “I mean after battle,” he said dryly, referring to the post-combat exhaustion that followed on the bio-cocktail of hormones that got you through the tough times.

  “Don’t know. This is such an extraordinary experience. Maybe?”

  He laughed and his chest vibrated with hers. His lightheartedness was hers. “We may drown,” he warned.

  “Drowning in pleasure. What a way to go.” She mimed passing out.

  “Slow this time?”

  “Yeah. But with that teeter-totter action.”

  “Hmm.”

  It was different this time. The slow sweep of his cock as they rose, the languid pull of it as they sank, merged into one long continuous orgasm, although Cam didn’t come. He was still hard and growing more aroused, as if the waves of pleasure rippling through the walls of her passage were stimulating him to heights of desire they had never scaled before.

  Up and down they plummeted and rose together, locked in tender embrace. Each time they kissed, they whispered to each other.

  “I love you, Frankie.”

  A deep breath and then down and back before she could reply. “I love you more.”

  “You were made to be my wife.”

  “You were made to be my phoenix husband.”

  “How can our love keep getting bigger?”

  “I think love makes the heart expand,” she explained.

  “I can’t wait any longer, my love.” He surged into her.

  Frankie felt the shot of semen at her core as a delicious heat that rivaled the heat of lava. Her head fell back. “I love you,” she sang as they slipped beneath the waves generated by their passionate union.

  * * *

  Cameron~

  He had always though it absurd to think any woman’s pussy was made for you. Like thinking that because a rubber clung like a second skin it had been made specially for you. But Frankie’s pussy was made for him. He could feel every delicate ridge. Every pulse of the blood plumping it. Every ripple of her orgasm. Their orgasm.

  Because he was sharing it, as nutty and woo-woo as that seemed to his bear. He was floating in the shared bliss of their mutual pleasure. Hot water lapped his face. Hang on. Drowning in pleasure was one thing. Drowning in hot water was sheer incompetence. But Frankie didn’t respond when he shook her. Her head flopped around and she nestled closer, but she didn’t awaken.

  Shift. He couldn’t let his mate drown. “Frankie,” he said sharply, using his battle voice. The one that cut through the noise of guns and the terror that numbed soldiers’ senses. “Up and at ’em.”

  Nothing. If anything his mate settled more deeply into sounder sleep. Crap. She had been exhausted when she returned from New Mexico. Then they had had sex, followed by a battle royale with a Hellhound, and then their long flight back to New Mexico and a second battle with an entire pack of Cerberuses. This round of sexual excitement had been the final straw.

  He let her go. As he expected, she floated. He swam beneath her and took her body onto his back. Held her wrists with one hand and paddled to the edge of the pool. The sides were steeply sloped and it was difficult to get a foothold, but automatically he spread his thighs and pressed harder on the rough rock. He could do this.

  His claws and pads gave him traction. He easily walked out of the water, his mate draped limply over his great shoulders and back. Shift. Quite literally. He didn’t know whether to rejoice that his bear was back, or gnash his teeth over the fact that he had lost control of it. Again. At this rate, he’d be turning in public and wind up in a fricking zoo.

  He lay down, careful not to disturb his treasure. Frankie was wearing only her bare skin. Her lovely fragile, womanly, soft bare skin. She snuggled into his wet fur and snuffled in her sleep. Best to let her sleep. He would like to shake and get some of the water out of his fur, but it was so warm in here, that being wet felt comfortable. At least in bear.

  So what was he now? A bear-phoenix-man, or what? Between one speculative thought and the next his eyes closed and he slept.

  * * *

  Frankie~

  The steamy scent of wet bear was overpowering. Pleasant, but overpowering. Frankie rubbed her cheek more deeply into her furry pillow, relishing the scent of her mate. Of Cameron. Her eyes popped open.

  She was lying on a bear skin. A living, breathing bear skin. How was this possible? Unless she was dreaming? But the bubbling snores of her bear assured her she was not. The steady waves of his aura told her that Cam was fast asleep. Those weird oscillations were still there in his aura, stronger and more stable now. She tried to tweak them, but they resisted her efforts. Maybe this was his new normal. Part of his double shift.

  She had lost her precious chunk of lava. Sometime in their play she had let it drop out of her mouth. She sighed. Not that she could ask Cam to risk losing his bear by going through the ritual of immortality. She would prefer to keep things as they were rather than diminish him in any way.

  True love was not selfish. But she did get to be disappointed that they would never fly together in full phoenix.

  Greedy wench. You think we could have more than we’ve got?

  “Cam. I thought you were asleep?”

  I am. You’re wandering through my dreams. Still yammering on about greater phoenix.

  “Greater phoenix is a thrill.”

  You have mercy on your bear. My heart isn’t made for this much excitement.

  “Huh.”

  If we get any more intimate, Warrior Woman, we’ll combust.

  She smiled. He was happy. They shared a transcendental bond. That would be enough. More than enough. “Our bond is pretty intense, isn’t it, Bear Boy. Do you think you’ll be waking up soon? We should go home.”

  We have a wedding to plan, Warrior Woman. Am I going to see you in white?

  “What am I? A fricking naval officer? I was thinking crossed swords and a military march.”

  His glorious laughter was echoed by their wing beats. He had as smoothly transitioned from bear to phoenix, as she had from woman to phoenix. It was time to go home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Grape Creek, Texas

  Frankie~

 
“I still don’t understand how Frankie’s lava worked if she hadn’t activated it,” Mom said with a puzzled frown. “I thought blood was an inseparable part of the transformation.

  Lincoln and Beverly were sitting across from her and Cam. Mom and Dad were at one end of the table holding hands. Hardy was having his afternoon nap in Grandma Angel’s portable crib.

  “It is,” Dad said. “You must have gotten blood on the lava, Frankie. Turned it into an Egg of Immortality. That’s the only explanation.”

  “Her feet were badly cut and bruised when she returned to Grape Creek,” Cam said. “And she was definitely using her talons to grip the lava, weren’t you, Frankie?”

  She nodded. She wished she felt as chipper as Cam appeared to. But she had woken groggy and spaced out, and her brain felt as if it were soaked in formaldehyde. Could she possibly have a hot springs hangover? She glared resentfully at Cam. He had drunk as much of that intoxicating beverage as she had. Why wasn’t he feeling loopy?

  “I cut my finger on a broken wine glass at our wedding,” Lincoln said reminiscently. “I accidentally got blood on my chunk of lava.”

  “Next thing I knew,” chimed in Beverly, “He was hauling me away from the dance floor and out to the desert.”*

  “But it was worth it, wasn’t it, dear heart?” Lincoln asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Beverly admitted with a blush.

  “If you got blood on your lava,” Dad said, “You’d have only had until sundown to feed it to Cameron. Lucky for you it was still active when that Cerberus attacked.”

  “Nothing about that attack was lucky,” groused Frankie. “So if Bear Boy ate an activated egg, why doesn’t he transform into greater phoenix?”

  “That will remain one of life’s little mysteries, daughter.” Dad’s voice held a reproof. “I very much doubt if eating another rock will make any difference. Anyway, I thought Cameron was happy to still be able to shift into bear.”

  “I am.”

  “He is.” She and Cam spoke together.

  “Problem solved,” Dad pronounced.

  “Which it was.” Cam had moved easily from bear to lesser phoenix, and from lesser to man. Clearly he had mastered both his morphs. Nevertheless she felt grumpy and out of sorts. Hungry, although the thought of food was nauseating. Definitely hungover.