Ignition: Alien Ménage Romance (Phoenix Rising Book 2) Read online

  Ignition

  Phoenix Rising

  By:

  Amelia Wilson

  J. A. Cummings

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Also By Amelia Wilson

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  About The Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Amelia Wilson/J.A. Cummings

  All rights reserved.

  http://ameliawilsonauthor.com/

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited, and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Sera Cooper tucked her three-month-old daughter Kira into bed, making certain that she was safely positioned and the baby monitor was turned on. She gave her one last kiss goodnight, then went back out into the living room of the apartment she shared with her mates.

  Theyn and Beno were sitting together on the couch, a space between them reserved just for her. The dimmed light from the floor lamps made the osteoderms, the soft scales on their skins, gleam gently. Nima sat nearby, her golden eyes fixed on Theyn’s handsome face. The room was silent, but through her link with her mates, Sera could tell that they had been having an animated telepathic conversation.

  She could guess what they had been discussing. They might have been talking about the Ylian colony on the planet Bruthes, where Nima was part of the Ylian Resistance. They might also have been discussing the hidden Ylian colony here on Earth. Either way, the topic was something that made Sera feel profoundly unsettled. The presence of Nima, a dedicated freedom fighter who was desperate to take her men to Bruthes, made her even more unhappy.

  The other woman was a genuine hero, someone who was full-blooded Ylian and would die for her people. She was also flat-bellied and didn’t have post-baby boobs.

  Beno, he of the coffee-colored skin and black hair, looked up at her and smiled, his glowing green eyes bright. Like all Ylians, his eyes were a solid color, reflective and luminous, with no human irises or pupils to be seen. The light and the lack of human features in Ylian eyes could have made them look threatening, but to Sera, they were beautiful. He asked aloud, “Is she sleeping?”

  “Like an angel,” she nodded, plopping down onto the couch between her mates. She put the speaker for the baby monitor on the coffee table and sat back, twisting so she was lying with her head in Theyn’s lap and her feet in Beno’s. Theyn, the fairer of the two, smiled and stroked her cheek as his golden hair fell into his shining blue eyes. Beno obligingly began to give her calves a massage.

  “Then she takes after her mother,” her golden lover said, his voice tender.

  Nima cleared her throat. “I should be going…”

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” Sera said. “It’s not like I can hear what you’re saying, anyway.”

  The Ylian woman smiled tightly. “You are in physical contact with His Highness and the Commander,” she disputed. “Your link will reveal what we are saying.”

  Sera nodded, feeling like a wife talking to a woman who hoped to be her husband’s mistress. “And that’s clearly not something that you want, so apparently you’re talking about something you don’t want me to know about it. Was it Bruthes, or was it Itzela?”

  Theyn and Beno exchanged an almost guilty glance, and the blond replied, “Itzela.”

  “The Men’s Quarters?” she guessed.

  “Yes.” Beno stopped rubbing her calf muscles and rested his hands on her shins. “We need to to do something for those males.”

  Sera thought back to the Ylian men she had seen in the colony that lay hidden behind artificial camouflage off the coast of South America. Those men had been prisoners in Queen Apfira’s palace, drugged and shackled to beds and at the mercy of Apfira’s mad scientist lieutenant, Lady Tayne. She shuddered. “Yeah. I agree. Something has to be done. When are we leaving?”

  Beno barked out a laugh. “We? Not we, my love.”

  Theyn joined in. “You need to stay here with Kira, where you’re safe.” He glanced at his partner again, and Beno nodded. “The two of us will be returning to Itzela with Nima and Commander Elina.”

  She wanted to object. She didn’t want her mates going into harm’s way and she really didn’t want them going off somewhere with Nima, but she knew that their baby needed her. She herself was no fighter. Beno was a soldier, and she’d seen that Theyn’s psychic abilities made him more than anyone could handle. He had shown his power when he helped to break them out of the American government’s detention center. Her men could take care of themselves in a battle, and if she was completely honest, she really couldn’t. When she’d gotten her PhD in archaeology, combat hadn’t been one of her electives. If she was with them on their expedition, she would just hold them back.

  Sera sighed, knowing that her mates had been privy to her entire wordless thought process. There were benefits and disadvantages to sharing a telepathic and empathic link. “Just don’t get yourselves killed. Kira needs to know her daddies.”

  Her blond mate’s smile was full of relief, and Beno gently squeezed her legs with his big, powerful hands. “We’ll be careful,” he promised. “You know I’d never let anything happen to Theyn.”

  “Don’t let anything happen to you, either.”

  “Guaranteed.”

  She looked down at her own hands, which were picking at her shirt anxiously, almost as if they were somehow separate from her and acting with minds of their own. In the dim light of the fading evening, the scales on her hands glistened. They had developed as part of her skin during her pregnancy and were showing no sign of going away. Theyn had theorized that her biochemistry had melded somewhat with theirs during the process of their merging and mating, and that carrying Kira to term had made the change more or less permanent. The truth was that nobody really knew for sure why Sera, who was at last eighty percent human and probably more, had started to display so many Ylian traits. She had some Ylian blood, but how it affected her body was almost impossible to determine. There were thousands of human/Ylian hybrids in the world, with vast irregularity and variations. Trying to predict what would happen with any hybrid was like navigating an ocean without a compass. Nobody knew what to expect. It was almost a miracle that she had conceived at all, especially given the Ylians’ difficulties with fertility.

  She forced her still-fluttering hands to hold still. Through their link, she asked, ‘Wh
en are you leaving?’

  They hesitated, but Beno, the only natural telepath of the three, answered, ‘Tomorrow at dawn.’

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to tell me what it is. I just want to know that you have one.’

  Theyn’s mental voice responded, cool and calm. Where Beno was fire, Theyn was a soothing breeze. ‘We have a plan.’

  Sera nodded. ‘Now tell me it’s foolproof.’

  ‘Nothing is foolproof,’ Beno sighed.

  Their bond mate added, trying to reassure her, ‘It’s as close to foolproof as we can make it.’ Theyn smiled apologetically. ‘That’s not too comforting, but I won’t lie.’

  She knew that the two men were waiting for her to respond, but she couldn’t think of a word to say. Sera could only nod to show that she had heard and understood.

  She rubbed nervously at her left ear, where she wore the earring/translator unit that helped her to understand the Ylian tongue. Sometimes she caught and understood words even when she wasn’t wearing it, so she was sure she’d be able to go without it someday. She just hoped that her men would still be with her when that time came.

  Her skin itched, and she passed her hand over her forearm, feeling the slick smoothness of the scales there. She loved the way the osteoderms felt on her mates’ skins, but she was less sure about having them on her own. It made her worry that they might find the new Ylian traits on her body off-putting, maybe even unattractive. The other changes she had experienced, the ones from carrying and bearing a nine-pound baby, worried her, as well. She felt fat and dumpy, as if she was just Kira’s mom and no longer the vibrant lover the two had come to know and desire. She wondered if it was even possible for them to desire her now. She wondered if they would find some other, thinner woman to take as their new mate, maybe a freedom fighter like Nima or a talented Ylian pilot like Commander Elina. She knew that her fears were foolish, or at least she hoped that they were, but she couldn’t stop her head from going off into uncomfortable imaginings.

  Sera looked up into Beno’s face, then craned her neck to look up at Theyn. Neither of them had given her the least indication that their love had diminished in any way, and they both still looked at her with the greatest of affection and admiration in their expressions. She should have felt secure and happy, but instead she was anxious, no matter how much she tried to calm herself down. She supposed it was some sort of insecurity or postpartum depression. At least that was what her best friend Joely had told her it was.

  To break the uncomfortable silence, Nima stood up from her spot on the easy chair. Theyn gracefully slid out from under Sera’s head, gently pillowing it in his hands as he lowered her to the sofa cushion. He left her with a kiss, then went to see Nima out. Beno took Sera’s hand and pulled her up and toward him, and she went with the tug until she was sitting in his lap. He wrapped his strong arms around her and held her tight.

  ‘We’re not going to take any stupid risks,’ he promised. ‘I have an obligation to you and to Theyn, but most of all to that little girl in there. We are coming back to you after this.’

  She put her head on his shoulder. She didn’t need to say anything, which was good, because she was still completely out of words.

  Beno put a finger under her chin and made her look up at him. Their eyes met, and he kissed her sweetly, his lips soft and gentle. When they parted, he told her out loud, his baritone voice rich and sonorous, “I don’t want to lose you, either.”

  Theyn returned to the living room after sending Nima on her way. He joined them on the couch, sliding up close so that he could put his arms around them both, facing Sera with his thigh to Beno’s hip. “Why are we talking about losing?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid for you,” Sera admitted.

  “I won’t make any promises that I can’t keep, but I will say this: I will do everything in my power to come back to you, and to bring our mate with me. We’re not losing anything.” Theyn smiled encouragingly. “Besides, we’re going to be acting on the side of right, and on the side of compassion. The Burning One will surely bless us.”

  At the mention of the Ylian deity, the corner of Beno’s mouth turned up in a cynical half smirk. To say he didn’t share their bond-mate’s spiritual leanings was an understatement. Theyn’s faith was strong, which was only appropriate, since he was a priest of their religion in addition to being a botanist and the oldest surviving male in the Ylian Imperial family. Sera didn’t know much about the Burning One. She was fascinated, her anthropological training driving her to learn as much about Ylian society as she could, but every time she brought it up, Beno would find some ingenious way to derail the conversation and change the subject. His antipathy toward all things spiritual was the deepest and only division between him and Theyn, and one that she was in no position to bridge.

  Maybe I can read up on it while they’re gone, she thought, if there are any books around here about it...which I doubt. Aloud, she asked, “How long do you think this will take?”

  Theyn shrugged. “In theory, not long at all. Maybe a few hours at the most.”

  “That’s if everything goes according to plan,” Beno told her.

  “And it if doesn’t?”

  “Then it will take longer.” Theyn intertwined his fingers with hers and looked into her eyes. “Don’t worry, my love. We’ll be fine. This is a hit-and-run rescue mission, not full-on combat. It’s not as dangerous as you seem to think it will be.”

  She was unconvinced. Beno’s palm moved to rest on the back of her neck while Theyn continued to hold her hands.

  The blond Ylian continued, selecting his words carefully. “It’s not uncommon, I’ve heard, for new mothers to have a hard time emotionally after a baby is born. That’s true of Ylian mothers as well as human mothers, or so I’ve been told.” He looked into her eyes, and while she was unreasonably annoyed that he had pegged her so dead to rights, the compassion she saw there kept her irritation blunted. “I don’t know everything you’re feeling, not even through our bond. You’re Kira’s mother and you’re the only one who carried her for all those months. We can never know how that feels. It must be hard to have her suddenly be a separate organism instead of a part of you.”

  Sera pulled her hands away. “She’ll always be a part of me,” she said in a hushed voice, still annoyed but now feeling the edge of hurt. “Just like I’d hope she’ll always be a part of you.”

  “Of course she will,” Beno told her. “She’s our world. She’s our delight.”

  “She’s our baby, and we love her more than life, just the way we love you.” Theyn sighed. “I’m just trying to say that I realize that there are things going on right now that are difficult for you, and even though I can’t completely understand it, I want you to know that I - that we - will always be here for you, no matter what you need. We will never turn away from you.”

  The brunet Ylian laced his dark fingers into her golden curls. “How could we turn away from perfection?”

  She knew they were trying to reassure her, but it was missing the mark. She pulled away. “I’m not perfect,” she grumbled. “Nobody is.”

  “That’s true,” Theyn agreed. “But even if you’re not perfect in every sense of the word, you are absolutely perfect for us.”

  The tight, nervous spot inside of her loosened and warmed a little at his words, and then Theyn gave her a look so warm and loving that she nearly wept. She blinked the moisture away. “I don’t know why I’m being this way… it’s so stupid....”

  “No. Never say you’re stupid,” Theyn said, his native gentleness not concealing the strength of his conviction. When he spoke, he meant what he said. “No emotion is ever stupid. Honor what you feel. I know we do.”

  Beno wrapped his arms tightly around Sera again and stood up from the couch, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. She knew that Ylians were stronger than they looked, far stronger than humans, but it never failed to make her heart beat a little faster when they displayed their powe
r. There was nothing more enticing to her than strong men.

  Without a word, Beno carried her to their shared bedroom, and Theyn followed a moment later after turning off the lights in the living room and securing the doors and windows. Sera put her arms around Beno’s neck and clung to him, feeling safe in his embrace but missing Theyn at the same time. She had never believed she would be involved with two men at once, but now she couldn’t countenance a life without them. Having only one man would feel so… unsatisfying.

  Beno sat on the mattress, bearing her down with him until she was lying beside him on the whisper-soft comforter. Theyn came in and closed the door behind himself, carefully putting the baby monitor on the dresser at his side of the bed.

  “She’s three months old,” Beno said softly. ‘Have you missed us?’

  She knew what he was really asking. Because of the limits that pregnancy and childbirth caused, they had not been able to make love since before Kira was born. The wait must have been difficult for the two of them; she knew how high their respective sex drives were. When they were combined, though, as they were through the telepathic link that Beno had forged between them, their need was that much greater, each man’s sense of lack amplified and extended by the lack felt by his partner. As for herself, until recently, she had been without any desire for anything but sleep.

  Tonight was different. She looked into his glowing green eyes, then at the luminous blue gaze of their blond mate. ‘Oh, yes,’ she nodded. ‘I have.’

  Theyn joined them on the bed, his body curling around her back while Beno pressed against her from the front. She felt protected and cherished in the circle of their arms, and she touched them both, her hands lightly running over the fabric of their clothing.

  ‘Show me how you’ve missed me,’ she told the two of them. ‘Love me…’

  Her two mates kissed her, first Beno, then Theyn. She pulled away and stood before them, slowly removing the shirt she had been wearing while their gazes lingered on the skin she revealed. She tossed the garment aside, not caring where it went, and held out her hands to them. They each took a hand and pulled her gently toward them, bringing her into their loving embrace.