The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (17 page)

His answering bellow sent
birds fluttering up through the trees and small animals scurrying for the
undergrowth. Connal’s muscles quaked around her, flexing surges of male power
chasing her orgasm in hard-hitting strokes. Her spine seized, hips rolling,
taking every inch of him. He was over her, in her, on her, his hips hammering home
his release in punctuated jerks of thigh-trembling climax, filling her with the
hot bursts of his passion. The rhythmic clench of her core wrung every last
drop from his body and she felt him shiver with the intensity. He opened his
throat on a howl of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

Dazed, her body was in chaos.
Euphoria dictated the melting of her muscles, the staccato breaths, the rapid
fluttering of her heart.

Feeling his heart drum
between her shoulder blades, the slowing rhythm hitched and Ash’s body stiffened
as fur rode up her spine. Razor tipped teeth bit into the curve of her neck,
brief and sharp, threatening to pierce through to her heartbeat.

And then it was gone, a dream
on the tails of her bliss. No pelt covered her shivering curves, no masculine
weight settled across her back, nothing, just cool air licking across her
sweat-glistening skin.

Something crashed through the
undergrowth, large and heavy, cracking branches and barrelling away from the
clearing at a tremendous speed. Ash spun, landing awkwardly and getting trapped
in her sweats. Scanning the fallen dark and creeping shadows that clung to the
trees, she found nothing. No one. The fur may have been a dream, a nightmare
caught on the end of her pleasure, but she was pretty sure Connal had been
larger than life and very real.

He’d left her! For the third
time since meeting him, the giant wall of growls had upped and left her! The
first time, yeah, she’d screamed at him to. The second, Ash figured that had
probably been for the best. Otherwise her knee may have crushed what had just
brought her to quivering screams.

But now? He left her now?

Trembling and thumbing a
smudge of dirt from her cheek, she wormed her way into her sweats, grateful
they hadn’t been torn in their collision, though her panties were goners. The
forest resumed its night-time soundtrack. There was no trace of him left behind
but the scuff of footprints that left large indents in the soft ground. He must
have pushed off hard, leverage to get as far away from her as possible.

Shit. What had she done?

Ash replayed the entire
encounter, from when her knees had hit the leafy dirt to when she’d cried out
his name and felt him climax inside her. She found no trigger for his freak
out. Maybe she’d screamed too loud and scared him off? Or he just found her ...
Oh God ... easy ... She’d gone down willingly, so very female under his
growling possession. Had she lost his attention when she’d let him into her
body?

Her legs were quivering, her
core resonating with the pounding that had torn her muscles to shudders. She
felt like spaghetti, limp and floppy and in no way able to get up just yet. How
he had managed to tear himself away from her was beyond her fathoming, and she
let herself hate him just a little more. Obviously she hadn’t rendered him
immobile with her incredible sexual prowess. Ash huffed. She could still smell
him on her, a wildness that had nothing to do with the forest around her.

She was ... addicted. Yeah,
addicted. It was as good a word as any and it fit the feeling she seemed to get
whenever he left her vicinity, as though her body tugged to follow after his
presence. She was taffy. It had never been this way before. Ash couldn’t
understand it. The nerd guys that got her mental motors revving enough to kinda
get her body on board had never made her scream down a goddamned forest, and as
her head dropped into her hands, she figured there were a few blind animals
stumbling through the undergrowth, flashed by her total lack of inhibitions and
bare body parts. God, had she really just let a near stranger bring her to such
a trembling climax? Judging by the tight ache still clenched in her lower body
... yeah, she had.

Ash forced herself to move.
She was out in the middle of a goddamn forest, with a dead body in some
direction she couldn’t quite remember, and panic crept slowly through the
embers of a fire not quite cold.

She jerked upright, snapping
in the direction of a faint rustle. ‘Connal?’Growing louder, it was too big to
be woodland furries. She watched the shadows part in the soft gloom of a
descending evening. Definitely not a deer.

‘Miss DeMorgan?’

And definitely not Connal.

‘Doc.’ She smoothed a hand
through her hair, worried her cheeks were still a tad too flushed to indicate
anything other than one hell of a ride.

‘Are you well?’ he asked,
looking her over. She knew how she must look to him, feverish and glassy-eyed.
‘Did he hurt you?’

‘I ... I’m fine. No one hurt
me, I ...’ Her brow furrowed as she looked warily up at the hand he extended in
aid. ‘What are you doing here, Doc?’ Ash tilted her head, brushing down her
jacket and securing the zip to her chin before she teetered to her feet and set
herself before him, as eye-level as she could get with another man who
out-heighted her.

‘I was worried. You left the
hospital before I could give you your antibiotics. Might I ask what brings you
to such an isolated spot, and so late?’

‘Research.’ Ash frowned,
clothing herself in the lie. ‘I was meeting with someone who had information,
he was helping me with field work for my thesis.’ He’d certainly worked her
into the field. Mentally shaking her head, she dragged her gaze to the Doc’s
with a scowl.

‘You are associating with a
very dangerous man,’ he said. ‘I came looking for you at the address on your
medical file. When I saw you drive by, following him ...’ Madden shook his
head, shoving his hair back from his face, a frown etching itself into his
features. ‘I couldn’t very well leave you to him.’

A gust of wind threaded
through Ash’s dark curls, and as her fingers tamed the leaf-ribboned strands
into a messy braid, she felt them tremble.

‘Dangerous?’ she asked
nervously. ‘Anyone can be dangerous, Doc. You’re the one that followed me here.
Shouldn’t I be more worried about your intentions?’ God, was she even making
sense? She had fluff in her brain and noodles for legs. Ash swayed a little and
the doctor’s strong fingers wrapped her upper arm in support.

‘We need to get you home,
Miss DeMorgan, and I do not recommend driving in your state.’ He was already
steering her downhill, through the wooded path snaking off from the clearing.
She followed, watching the tree line for any sign of the man who had sent her
body into meltdown. Nothing. He really had left her. The fucking bastard.

She pushed off from the Doc’s
arm and attempted an adult walk. It worked. Ish. ‘Tell me something,’ she
asked, waiting until his face turned to hers. ‘What’s so dangerous about
Connal?’

‘The man is a killer,’ he
replied, ‘an assassin.’

A quick glance told her the
doctor was very serious, his brows pulled down over his eyes, mouth set in a
thin line of anger and concern.

Lost for words, Ash followed
in silence. The trees gave way to a clearing where the doctor’s shining, silver
beast of a car was parked.

Shit. Wandering through the
woods with him was bad enough but sealing herself in a vehicle with him
suddenly seemed all kinds of horror movie. Something inside Ash stirred with
warning and halted her footsteps under the branches of a huge tree.

‘You know, I have my car. I
walked this far, I’m pretty sure I can ...’ Drive. Oh hell. Even if she managed
to convince the doctor she was fit to drive, he’d still insist on walking her
back to her Minor. And there lay the problem. Because next to the Minor was a
giant hole and a body in a tarpaulin that would smell just ripe enough to
destroy any notion that it could be a tree being planted.

‘No,’ he said, with no space
for argument. Unlocking the car with a robotic bleep, he held the door open for
her, all quiet authority as he waited. ‘It’s getting late, Miss DeMorgan, we
can come back and find your car in the morning. You may enjoy tangling with
scum like Savage, but I don’t. Besides, I have no desire to wind up the victim
to a pack of wild dogs. Please. Let me take you home.’

And that’s how, a ridiculous
amount of awkwardness later, they wound up in front of Ash’s house with only
the streetlamps and moon for lighting.

Madden cut the engine and her
head lifted from its lean against the window, the interior lights flickering on
as he stepped from the car. Ash sat up straighter and her neck twinged in
protest. Crooked at an unnatural angle for the entire drive, she’d chosen to
ignore the doctor as he tried to engage her in talk of ‘the Savage’. He’d
spoken with a familiarity that unnerved her.

‘He’s not someone you want as
your friend, Miss DeMorgan. He’s a wanted man. A known sociopath.’

She’d looked at him then,
shocked.

‘Yes, you were incredibly
lucky. He’s suspected of committing a lot more serious crimes than just taking
girls into the woods. Your injuries aren’t the worst I’ve seen come through my
emergency room. Things people wouldn’t
believe
.’

He caught her eyes through
the rear-view mirror and his tone caught her curiosity, pulling its tail until
her interest came peeking out. It must have shown on her face, the open
surprise she wasn’t careful enough to hide.

‘Yes, I know about
them
,’
he replied to her unspoken question, ‘more than I wish I did.’

Ash didn’t know what to do
with that. Her brain was already having a hard time reconciling this sociopath
Madden painted with the Connal who had talked with her of monsters she couldn’t
dare believe existed. He’d hunted down the creatures that attacked her. He’d
had ample opportunities to kill her if he’d wanted to.

Doc Rob was certain Connal
wasn’t ‘a good man’. To be honest, Ash would have been surprised if he was. But
if what the Doc said was to be believed, she’d just fucked a serial killer,
willing or not.

Her door clicked open and she
half fell against the support of her belt. Legs asleep, arms leaden, she was
aching and raw in places she’d forgotten she could ache. While she’d have loved
to put her exhaustion down to Connal making her orgasm so hard she’d seen
stars, she knew that was simply feeding desires that stirred to be fucked just
as hard, again and again. Perhaps the doctor’s insinuations were right, and
she’d been drugged. Maybe he’d put something in the flask, a fast-working
aphrodisiac and a slow-working sedative rendering her sleepy and lolling her in
the posh leather interior of the doctor’s car. Madden had told her of Connal’s
violent couplings, his womanising. Made sense he’d fuck before he killed.
Except she’d got away. The doctor had arrived in time to interrupt. Oh God.

‘What did that bastard do to
you?’ He whispered angrily into her hair as he half-carried her to the door.

She pushed at him in
annoyance. ‘No one did anything to me, except you. If I’d known doctors carried
their care over into my private life, I never would have gone to the emergency
room. Let me go!’

His arms loosened
reluctantly. Ash fumbled her key into the lock, grateful the small, jangling
bundle hadn’t been lost in the middle of the forest, and shoved the door open.

She sighed, toeing off her
boots and kicking them into a corner, flattening to the wall as a bounding
growl of long limbs and snarling teeth shot out to ward off any advance into
her home the doctor might have made. Ash snickered softly, hooked her fingers
into the mutt’s collar and tugged him off guard duty. But she didn’t invite the
doc in. ‘You were a little slow there, weren’t you, pup?’ He eyed Madden with a
steady threat in his brown gaze. She cast amused eyes up to the doc.

He was wide-eyed and pale,
tensed as though he were about to bolt and run for his life.

‘This is Setty ... Setanta.’
Ash stroked the hound’s giant head lovingly. ‘I named him for the great
defender of Ireland. Couldn’t leave the poor guy with a name like Mutt.’ Her
grin was a little cheeky and a whole lot laughing. ‘Fitting, huh? Are you
okay?’