Within a span of a couple of pages:

"You taste sweet. It must be all the fruit you eat.”
....
“I need to move, precious beloved.”
....
“Spill for me, my beloved one.”
....
“I love you, Nakai,” Einian murmured drowsily.
“I love you, my beautiful love.”


( )

This story about two aliens and one human trying to figure out how to relate to each other is full of surprises. Nakai may begin as an Alphan warrior, fierce and out to fight the Xyrans, but he turns out to be much more than that. Sukh seems to be an unfeeling, brutal Xyran warrior, but he too has a few secrets just waiting to be discovered. And Einian, a human who starts out as a prisoner who has been beaten but not defeated, is in for the biggest surprise of his life. Taking these three men and melding them into a ménage relationship that will fulfil them all is not an easy task, but Pelaam doesn’t shy back from the challenge, managing to greatly entertain me in the process.

Nakai may have had to be a warrior for a while, but now that he has fulfilled his obligation, he is free to pursue other interests. Beyond the family vineyard he has always hoped to return to, he discovers that he has one mate for sure, Einian, and possibly another man he has to deal with on top of that. Einian is the one who has grown to love the fierce Xyran warrior, but Nakai isn’t exactly immune to his charms, such as they are, either.

Einian seems to be the weakest of the three men, and in physical terms, he is certainly not a muscle-packed fighter. But his mental resilience and inner determination are what set him apart, and that is before you start counting his ability to build bridges between himself and two aliens who normally would end up killing each other. Needless to say, I admired him a lot.

Sukh is such an impenetrable rock in the beginning, I wasn’t sure what to think of him. Like Nakai, I had to take Einian’s word for it and believe that there was more to the Xyran than a first, and even a second, glance implied. I cannot say that I ended up loving him, but I grew to respect him and understood him a lot better by the end of the story than I did at the beginning.

If you like wild stories about hot alien-human three-way relationships, if you want to find out more about a rather complicated relationship between beings who start out as enemies, and if you’re looking for a read that is as full of treacherous actions as it is of hot loving, then you will probably enjoy this novella.


NOTE: This book was provided by Evernight Publishing for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )