The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (35 page)

‘You have me, Little Red. But
not here,’ he growled.

A hum in her throat hinted at
a protest before her brain kicked in over the rush of hunger and a blush hit
her cheeks, head dipping. ‘No, not here, of course ... Liath.’ Then where? His
apartment? Um nooooo. Surviving that long without combusting was impossible.
‘My room?’ Breathy, it was all invitation. Where better to get lost in the
heaven of him than in the solace of the place she called hers.

B
reathless, they stumbled up the staircase, needy hands
tearing at fabric in a fevered hunt for skin. He ravaged her mouth with growled
demands and her nails clawed up his ribs in answer. Screw slow, tender
seduction. The sands were running out for them and they both felt the urgency,
like a wire in the blood, pulsing a current through their veins. He needed her
fast and furious, craved that deep, primal connection one last time, before the
clock ran down. They reached the landing and she tackled him back against the
wall, dragging her teeth over his lower lip with growled purrs, fisting his
shirt and hauling him across the threshold into her bedroom. She wanted it too.
It was in every syllable of her starved body language.

Connal stiffened under her
touch, a moment’s hesitation, a small voice piping up, reminding him that he
was going to have to betray her, and this would only make it harder. The
thought twisted in his gut like poison, but he could see no other way to save
her from her own infuriatingly overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

Seizing the moment, she
slammed the door behind them, jolting him back into the room. Planting her
palms on his chest, she cracked his spine back against the closed door, burying
her hands in his dreads and dragging his mouth onto her kiss-swollen lips.

‘Fuck me, Big Bad,’ she
breathed, ragged with lust.

That was it. Game over for
Connal, desire trampling over logic in the stampede of her carnal demands.
Fabric bunched over her head, his fingertips sparked off her skin, every touch
igniting flames. His hands were rampant, everywhere at once, knotted in her
hair, stroking her jaw, weighing the spill of her perfect breasts into his
palms, riding down the base of her spine and under her sweats to cup the full
rounds of her ass. He dominated her senses with rough demands, crushed his
thighs to hers, the iron girth of his erection pressed into her lower belly as
he marched her backwards to the end of the four-poster and tossed her onto the
downy covers.

Stood between her thighs, his
dark gaze was heavy with erotic threat, devouring her naked curves while his
hands got to work, hooking the waistband of her sweats and dragging them down
her legs. Roughened palms rode the sensitive skin of her inner thighs until his
fingertips grazed the delicate folds of her sex, jolting her hips up off the
mattress. With a growl of male satisfaction, he dropped to his knees at the end
of the bed and, bracing her wide, his stubbled mouth retraced the path of his
hands with rasping contacts that seared his breath to her skin in a hungry
brand. Dark lashes flicked up to catch her flushed gaze a moment before he
claimed her in the most intimate of kisses, a moan escaping into the sucking
seal of his mouth on her lips. She was sweet and lusciously wet, the seam of
her cleft parting for the stroking, velvet invasion of his tongue. He coaxed
her open, delving into her swollen inner petals, boldly exploring the
exquisitely sensitive pearl concealed within. She cried out, fisting handfuls
of the dark silk, and when she bucked again, his strong hand shot out to span
her lower belly, pinning her for the merciless onslaught of his wickedly
talented mouth.

He was rabid and she was
infected with the strain of lust driving electric spikes through her nerves.
She vibrated with tension, her bones liquid, her spine stringing her like a bow
as he arrowed bolts of ravaging ecstasy into her every cell. His tongue was a
wet-velvet rasp of excruciating sensation, stroking sweeps of euphoria to her
core and lapping delicate, highly sensitised flesh to agonising quivers of
bliss. God, he was ... her brain spat up senseless whimpers. There were no
words ... Master of her every erogenous zone, Ash was a writhing mess tangled
in silk, a grinding reaction pinned and held wide for his carnal torture. She
was breaking apart, fracturing at the seams. His tongue touched the bead of her
pleasure and she skipped a little closer to the edge. His teeth grazed, sucking
a sharp kiss on delicate folds, and she was violently arching, hips jolting,
rolling, riding his mouth, working herself hard against the scruff of his jaw
as he tormented her with flicking wet curls of his tongue.

Ash was dying, she was sure
of it. Floating, the tension wound in her core, a corkscrew that had her
tearing her fingers into his dreads and reining him in closer, crying his name
loud with every wind of her hips. She was desperate for deeper, for the little
bit of edge she needed to hurtle her into the abyss.

And he gave it to her. When
the sharp point of a canine snagged on the hood of her clit and his tongue
drove into her molten sex, she was gone. Lifted from her body, the core of her
being untangled in waves of spasming ecstasy, she came undone on his lips,
broken by a kiss and detonating into wildfire tremors. He was heaven and she
was lost in him, flowing her release to the sound of her own screams. ‘Connal!’

Relentless, he rode her
through the crest of that first climax with his tongue, and her hips kicked up
to rasp the bristled line of his jaw on her inner thighs. Jeans shucked down to
half mast while she jerked and shivered, he reared up between her legs to feed
the iron girth of his erection into the spasming liquid silk of her body.
Sheathed to the hilt, his thighs smacked up to the bumper of her ass and she whimpered.
A growl tore free from his throat as she gripped his thick shaft in the
rhythmic contractions of her release and he started to pump.

Her vision sparked fireworks
behind her lids and the universe unravelled in her eyes, piercing him with
brutal emotion as their gazes locked and she canted her hips to kick him
deeper, accepting every thick, penetrating inch into the well of her heat. This
is where he belonged. Heavy and hard between her thighs, pistoning powerful
hips to strike into the heart of her. Every thrust incited her to claw, her
nails rough and gouging into the skin of his back, raking the tight, flexing
muscles of his ass in a spur until he snarled. He punished her with a single
restraint.

His large hands laced her
fingers, dragging her arms above her head to pin her for the brutal,
deep-thrusting collision of his hips. His dreads snaked across her bared
breasts as his mouth and teeth closed a sucking kiss to one tight nipple. The
heat of his growled breath evaporated the glistening strokes of his tongue from
her flushed skin. Stretched out beneath him on the altar of his lust, he
worshipped her body with rough possession.

Strung taut on the crackling
lines of erotic tension, the pressure mounted inexorably. His control was
hanging on a tripwire, but all the while, his sex-fogged mind was battling a
tug-of-war. She was perfectly positioned, pinioned beneath him and distracted
to the point of recklessness, her wrists so close to the bedposts that snapping
the cuffs to shackle her to the bed would be the easiest thing in the world, a
simple reach and shift manoeuvre. So why weren’t his hands obeying him? The
betrayal tore at him from the inside. She would hate him, but she would live,
and that was all that mattered. With steeled conviction, his hips kicked a
powerful thrust, kissing her depths, drilling her to the edge of the precipice.
Jaw set rigid, the pain in his expression was hidden from her eyes as his lips
found her ear to whisper his ragged admission.

‘Tá brón orm. Maith dom é, mo
ghrá.’ He begged her forgiveness and confessed his love in the same breath, the
mother tongue faltering on his lips. ‘I love you, Ashling DeMorgan. Never
forget, never doubt.’ They were words he never imagined he could say again. All
capacity to love withered with his son’s violent death, buried with those tiny
bones in the rocky ground. And now, a delicate thing reborn, cut bittersweet
pain into his heart. Reluctant fingers slipped from her hand to reach into the
back pocket of his jeans for the cuffs ...

Bite to be bitten.

In the midst of the chaos,
the revelation shook her harder than the orgasm barrelling over her. It all
made sense and slammed into place.

She would do anything to keep
him, to stay by his side. Even if it caused him to hate her. Stomach clenching
with a brutal thrust, Ash fought to retain sense enough to time her strike. It
was their only chance, of her surviving, of him surviving, of stopping the plan
he no doubt had in place that could kill them all.

Ash trusted him with her
life, less so with his own.

‘Connal ...’ The words were
tested on the back of her tongue, given strength by tear-heavy sincerity and
emotion. If they didn’t make it, she needed him to know. ‘I love you, my beast.
Never, ever forget. Never doubt.’ When she felt the coil twist in her gut and
rush fire up the curve of her spine, she yanked viciously on his dreads.
Dragging his head to the side, she gave over to an instinct to mark that had
been humming in her since that first time in the woods.

Her teeth cut into his skin
and she felt the change arc over him. His thrusts stuttered, his muscles seized
and his snarl vibrated on her skin. Ash dug her nails into his nape and bit
down, harder, willing him to give in to the animal potency rushing in her
blood.
What he said was true. Biting her was as instinctive as breathing. Like a
pit bull with a rag, he fell on her throat, his canines locking inside her. His
bite was tenacious, teeth buried deep in her tender flesh while his cock pulsed
in the satin vice of her body, his release surging in hot, rhythmic shudders.
So deep inside her, in so many ways, as though their souls had been wired up
together and were shorting out on the erotic overload.