The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (27 page)

‘Yes ...’ she moaned. Mounted
on the throne of his hips, she ground her passion along the iron ridge of flesh
nestled in the folds of her sex. Even through her panties, his heat seared her.
He was exquisite, steely and thick, nudging the taut barrier, kissing up
against the hidden bead of her desire until she was mewling with frustration.

Ash’s fists struck the solid
wall of his chest again, unfurling to lock her nails in his skin. Clawing red
lines down to his nipples, she twisted his metal. The sound that left Connal’s
mouth was a hissing snarl she remembered well. That first time she’d touched
him like this, she’d made him animal. The intensity she craved now had Ash
tugging as she ground her pleasure to his shaft. ‘Please, Connal, Big Bad, I
need you inside me.’ A bossy growl half whimpered from her throat as sensation
swept her, head to toe, in a race of wildfire.

He toyed with her, hooking
her panties and running rough fingers along the cleft of her sex. Her heartbeat
pounded beneath the circling pads of his fingers, pulsing in the depths of her
body, empty and aching for him, until, without warning, Connal yanked the
fabric to one side, and Ash’s breath hitched as her satin folds split around
the girth of his erection. His hips kicked up, sliding the hard ridge of his
cock through her drenched arousal, guiding him to her tight threshold, where
his strong arms held her, poised on the brink of penetration. Wrenching himself
from her kiss, he sought out her eyes and the anticipation held her spellbound.

Inch by thick, throbbing
inch, he invaded her clenched resistance, watching the erotic moment play
across her expressions, velvet sheathing the hard steel of his cock. He played
her body slowly, like an instrument, coaxing her to sing for him in whimpering
melodies. And she did whimper, right up until the strings of his restraint
snapped and his punching thrust splashed up the sides of the tub. His hands
clawed her flesh in a bruising grip that slammed her down hard into the seat of
his lap. They both cried out at the wet slap of skin as he kissed her depths.
It was a pounding, single-strike collision that bolted him into the soul of her
passion. He was ... she had no words, but he was more, more than she
remembered, more than she could handle and everything she craved.

Her fingers knotted into his
dreads, for purchase, for control, as her body wound up, thighs tensed, riding
her to his tip. His eyes were aflame.

Everything she’d fought
against with him, everything she’d doubted and questioned after their first
time, was welling up. Wild, visceral desire was corkscrewing inside her and it
wanted out. Her teeth sank into his lower lip, distance closed in a desperate
whimper and a rough kiss, a harsh communion that slammed her down his length
and seated her solidly in his lap once more, demanding he let go of the leash
that restrained his fire. She wanted to burn with him.

Her body bucked, wild in his
hands, and his hips thrust up between her thighs in a brutal, pounding rhythm
that bruised pleasure into soft flesh. Water lapped their skin in the wake of
every violent thrust.

High on the raw eroti
c
i
s
m of
her own wanton grinding, she rode the thick girth of his cock with wet,
dragging resistance that shuddered through the tensed flexion of his muscle.
His rough palms crushed the weight of her breasts, pinching the tight peaks of
her nipples between thumb and forefinger, in time with the splashing beat of
his hips to the rounds of her ass. His head fell back on the edge of the bath,
extended canines biting down into kiss-swollen lips. His eyes were wild with
lust, the sounds from the back of his throat primal, growled pleasure, building
in intensity with every thrust. 'Come for me, Little Red,' he rasped, 'I want
to watch you come apart on my cock.'

She was flying and falling,
ridden raw between her thighs, and Connal held the key to her ultimate
detonation. She was lost in him, consumed by the devouring pace of their lust.
Her nails scored his skin, adding passion to the marks of pain in his flesh,
clawing her possession into him with every pistoning punch of his hips. Carnal
warfare, that’s what it was, physical and animal, expressing a connection she
dared not touch upon.

‘Connal ...’ Her palms
covered his hands, squeezing him over her breasts. Tight strung lines vibrated
quivering tension to the core of her being, reeling her to the edge, holding
her over the depths of shuddering bliss ... and dropping her on his command.
Ash freefell on a howl that resonated in her soul, her voice a new emotion as
she splintered. Her heart stammered as her body seized, contracting a fist of pulsing
ecstasy around the ruthless driving girth of his cock, bathing him in the kiss
of her soul as she fell apart around him.

The water surged over the lip
of the bath, flooding tile just as his own climax overflowed, spilling deep
inside of her in hot, pulsing waves, tensing every muscle in his body to rigid,
pumping steel. His hips jerked beneath the water, his hands flying out to brace
her hips, steadying her, locking her down on the physical force of his release
as it pounded through them.

The surges of his climax
triggered small quakes in her centre that wrapped him tight within her and
stroked him in gentle flexes of silken pleasure. Utterly spent, Ash crested,
surfing lazily on the streams of energy flowing between them. She didn’t think
she could move. Collapsed into his chest, his heartbeat drummed her cheek with
a morse code of frantic exhilaration and she lay, listening to it, counting the
beats as it slowed and set hers to a synchronised tempo.

Something had changed.

There was no denying it. This
was so different to their rabid coupling in the forest. And it wasn’t just that
he was holding her tenderly now, his fingers braiding the curls that fell to
the small of her back. It was that she couldn’t find a shred of ice inside her
in that moment. He filled her so completely with his fire, there was no room
for the cold, and she was well and truly molten. Nuzzling her cheek over the
ring of metal through his nipple, Ash prayed it was a permanent thaw, let her
emotions well at the surface and left only one of them nameless.

She couldn’t touch that yet,
so she touched him, fused her mouth to his in soft strokes, feathered
tenderness to the bow of his lips, swallowed his groans and fed him her purrs.

The lost little girl decided
she liked getting lost in him.

T
he sleepy weight of her body was a sprawl against
skin-heated sheets, a lazy drape of limbs lost in a tangle of sex-puddled
pleasure. Ash tested her fingers, flexed them as a yawn took over her entire
being in an arching stretch, feline and drowsy. Her toes curled against the
muscled column of what she assumed was a thigh, blinking slowly, a crack of
lashes showing the hazy dark of the ripped outline of the man she couldn’t get
enough of. Even now, with pulses thrumming in places she didn’t even know she
had a heartbeat and aches she didn’t know could exist, Ash wanted him. Her hand
danced up the contours of his abs, sliding slowly to cover the steady beat of
his heart. Settled after racing so hard, hers matched its gentle thrum, a
symphony of relaxation drifting through the dream world of their union.
Sex-husked words stroked from her throat as she met the slumberous heat in
Connal’s gaze.

‘Mmmm -’ Ash stretched again,
unable to resist gliding as much of her sensitised skin as she could against
his, vining around him ‘-are we going to have to hide down here forever?’ Her
lashes batted playfully, lips inched into a cheeky, seductive smile only
slightly turned to shy by the blush rising in her cheeks. ‘Because I wouldn’t
mind.’

The corners of his mouth
tugged into a lazy, answering smile. ‘It’s not full moon any more, Little Red.
The Bogeymen have all gone, for now.’ His head craned up off the pillow to
claim her mouth with a rough stubbled brand, words murmured to soft lips. ‘Nothing
to keep you here but me.’

‘You’re a damn good reason,
Big Bad.’ Ash ran her foot down his calf, face nuzzled to his chest. Her words
came muffled on the next breath. ‘They’re gone? Did you kill them all?’

‘No.’ Connal shook his head,
his eyes diverted back to where his fingertips had paused their exploration of
the triskelion tattoo on her shoulder. ‘They went home. You might say they have
a curfew.’

‘The moon?’ She nodded, cheek
rubbing his skin, shoulder rolling into his touch, nudging for it. ‘What, I’m
not important enough to break curfew?’

‘Not when the punishment
turns you to dust.’ He ran his knuckles down the side of her cheek. ‘You are
everything to them, Ash, the lynchpin to their survival, but there is no
survival if they stay above ground once the red fog wanes. Without it, they’re
doomed, a thousand years of existence revisited upon them in a matter of
hours.’ Running the pad of his thumb along her jaw, he exhaled. ‘Their prison
beneath the black lake sustains their immortality. They must return there, or
die in agony.’

‘A land of eternal youth,
provided you never set foot back on the earth,’ Ash masked her fear in nervous
laughter. ‘It’s like the legend of
Tír na nÓg
.’

‘At the heart of all myths
lies a grain of truth, Harvard girl.’

After all the horror-movie
type myths that had sprung to life before her eyes in the last twenty-four
hours, Ash figured she could stretch a little further to buy into mythical
lands of canine immortals and life-giving fog. And on that note ... Her teeth
worried at her lower lip, brow furrowed. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘once the fog comes
back, it’s open season on Ashling and Connal?’

Connal’s silence, and the
grim set of his jaw, confirmed her worst suspicions. ‘Until then, you’ll be
safe-ish. The house is protected, they can’t touch you there, but they do have
their people above ground, like your friend, the doctor.’ The way he said
‘friend’ came out far from friendly.

‘Oh, safe ... ish ...’ She
scowled at him, swatting his shoulder. ‘Way to reassure, Big Bad.’ But it did
reassure, to an extent. The wolves couldn’t get in, weren’t even on the earth
until the full moon spun back around. And Connal could take a bunch of human
minions, right? ‘The doctor, Madden. He’s really one of them?’ she asked. ‘He
knows where I live, where we are. Is he like the girls, bitten?’ ‘Cause she was
having a hard time shutting out disturbing images of the doc rubbing up on the
men in the club.

‘No, not bitten. Madden’s
kind are infinitely more dangerous than the human thralls.
They’re just mindless
slaves to their own desires. Sex, violence, deep-rooted traits brought to the
fore and amplified by the
eitr
. Many are driven to insanity. The doctor
is one of the
Thegn
, servants of the Fomorians. They are a sect of
celibates. They share blood with the wolves, but they can’t take animal form.
Think homicidal, sociopathic monks and you’ll be on the right track.’

‘I think anyone would be a
little homicidal if they had to be celibate,’ she smiled, heat in her eyes as
her thigh shifted against his hip. Not something she could possibly imagine
with him around. ‘He’s going to be gunning for us then. He’s not the only one,
is he? Will the house protect us from him, or isn’t he wolf enough?’ Many
questions, but only a few bubbled out, tainted with faint hysteria. The main
one involved running, lots and lots of running. To the US, back home. It was so
big, they’d never find her, them.

She should never have come to
Dublin, never followed the breadcrumb trail that led to the witch’s gingerbread
house of terror. ‘We can run, Connal. He can’t find us if we’re not here. I
know places.’ She’d backpacked and moved around enough to know where to go.
We
cannot die
went unsaid and blared loud across the forefront of her mind.

‘Tell me this,’ Connal
regarded her seriously, ‘did Madden manage to take blood from you?’

Her neat brows met in a deep
fissure of worry and she nodded her head curtly, recalling the doctor's slick
manner.
Plámás
, the Irish had a word for it. It was a sickening
realisation. He’d worked one over on her. ‘Yes,’ she stammered.

Then we’re screwed
. He didn’t verbalise it, but the words hung in the
air like flashing neon.