The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (44 page)

F
reedom. Sort of. If wandering a rabbit warren of
tunnels counted as freedom. Ash had worked the lock on the door loose with a
sprig of herb and her nail. She was no MacGyver
,
but it had got
her out. Foster homes had been good for something, at least.

No more idle thinking. No
more acting the sitting duck.

‘I'm getting the hell out of
here, not waiting for the next male to …’ Well, Ash didn’t really know what
they were going to do to her. She’d attacked their King and their buddy, so she
assumed it wouldn’t be a pile of cuddles.

The balcony had been a no-go.
Even if she could scale the sheer cliff-face, she’d be too exposed in that
harsh landscape. That wouldn’t get her home. It would just get her dead. Connal
said there were conduits, black lakes that led to the surface. If she could
find one, home might be a heel click away.

Meeting yet another dead end,
she greeted it with her fist. Her growl spun with her, slumping her spine to
the cold rock.
We’re lost, and we’re going to remain lost until Mac or one
of his cronies sniffs us out like the bloodhounds they are. We’ll be hunted
eventually. Or starve waiting.
Her stomach was talking and that was not a
good sign. She couldn’t risk eating the food Fite brought. What if the meat was
drugged? She’d been unconscious when Mac got to her last time,
and
she
wasn’t gunning for a repeat performance.

She pushed off, and with
quiet footsteps, set herself on the path down another corridor. It stretched on
forever, miles of stone that twisted and led nowhere. Flames cast her shadow
into the darkness in front of her. She encountered no one, her bare feet
carrying her over the stone ground, footsteps echoing the beat of her heart.
The sconces offered little heat and chills raised bumps on her skin, the air
getting cooler, fresher as she turned a corner. It had to be opening up. She
tugged at the robe she’d fastened around herself and poked her head around the
corner.

It was not a cold cavern.

It was not an exit.

Ash whipped herself back,
pressed flush to the wall as her face flamed with enough heat to forge a sword.
She sucked in a breath, mind stuttering over what she’d seen.

What had she seen?

Ash moved until the room came
back into view and, with her heart racing, she studied, trying to make sense.

There had to be five … no,
wait …
six
, very naked males surrounding a woman. Heavy chains hung from
a sophisticated structure fastened into the high ceiling. The woman was
suspended by her wrists, helpless. They flowed around her, muscle and large
hands shaping her svelte curves. Ash frowned. The woman was flailing, her keens
getting louder and louder as they closed in on her. And then a splash of red
hit the floor and Ash’s mind narrowed to the small drop, so bright on the dark
rock. Snarls gave voice to another droplet, the growls rising as blood fell and
Ash lurched with the realisation.

They were eating her!

They fell on the female,
baited by first blood, and Ash couldn’t see her for males. Ravenous, their hands
pulled, thighs flexed, muscle rippled. They were animals embodied by stunningly
sculpted masculinity. The female screamed, stopping Ash’s heart. That was not a
scream of terror. Pitched low and throaty, that scream was pure sex. It hit Ash
at the centre of her lust, awakening it, a primal response to the energy arcing
through the cavern.

She’d been so very wrong.

The woman was not being
eaten.

She was being bitten.

Ash knew exactly how that
felt. Her fingers strummed over the marks in her throat, probably invisible
now, yet she could feel them. Memories of sensations lit up her nerves: Connal,
his teeth, his body moving within hers as his bite took her to ecstasy. Her
body went up in flames. Her eyes stayed locked on the motion of the males. The
flash of canines, sharp and white, left streaks of crimson on the woman’s pale
skin. The female form arched, her mouth falling open as the giant breadth of a
male asserted himself between her spread thighs.

Oh …
damn
...

The woman scrabbled, heels
scraping the floor, penetrated so hard her toes barely touched ground and she
had to dig her stilettos into the columns of his thighs for purchase.

Red winked from the bottom of
scratched soles.

It was
those
shoes.

She hadn’t looked familiar:
face thinner, hair wilder, makeup smudged beyond repair. But looking closer,
beyond the blown pupils and slack-jawed pleasure, it was
her
, the girl
in the street with the coveted red-soled shoes. Ash had barely glimpsed the
female but she never forgot the Red.

A howl snapped Ash’s gaze up
from the floor in time to watch another male slide into the girl’s bound and
willing form. Whimpers mixed with guttural groans, chains clinking rhythmically
with the force of their thrusts. It was heavy with eroticism, the air blooming
with the sounds of sex. The males moved over her, in her, stroking flesh with
claws and teeth and Ash responded as though she was the one caught in their
chains. Her body burned, her skin shivered, her muscles tensed and her mind was
blown wide open by the impressions pouring from the males.

The wolves were doing that
thing they did, what Fite had done, what Connal had done, sensations and
thoughts touching hers with images and emotions. No words, more like they
projected an idea of the meaning behind words. She still didn’t understand it,
but the message they were sending was loud and clear. It was primitive lust,
intimate and rough. They wanted to destroy the woman, make her a boneless,
motionless mass of ecstasy, take her until there was nothing left to take.
They’d give her parts of themselves, their cocks, their hands, the brutal
fullness of them filling her every way they could. And it would devastate her.

Ash shuddered, back to the
wall, head craned to watch the seven of them sink deeper into the maelstrom.
Hands were everywhere, pumping and stroking, milking. Tongues lapped at sweat
and canines punctured, wringing out tremor upon tremor, an earthquake of
ecstasy spiralling higher every time they bit into her.

Ash felt empty, observing but
not participating, throbbing between her thighs to the bass beat of their
rumbling growls. The side of her that gave her talons was mewling to be part of
the dog pile, ready to roll over and pant. She struggled to draw less blatantly
aroused breaths. This should not be getting her hot. Logic fought to reconcile
her lusts, while instinct dictated the physical response that left her sleek
and wet at the scene playing out before her with a hardcore soundtrack.

Her thighs clenched as her
eyes caught on the wolf between the female’s thighs. Tall, broad and
dark-haired, his eyes held hers in his crimson-hazed stare, and she knew him.
He was the one from Form, hairy and brutish, she’d been too intrigued by his
tattoo at the time to pay him any special attention. She really looked now, took
in the chiselled power that seemed bred into their race, and blushed to the
tips of her toes when his lips curved in a rakish smirk.

Busted.

His eyes provoked her,
challenged her, and an impression, heavy with erotic images, locked into her
mind.

Hot, focussed strokes,
bent backwards, stuffed and stretched, bearded jaw burning her skin as a warm
mouth closed over her nipple and hips pistoned between her thighs. His snarl as
he commanded the others to join, made space for another … Brandr … I am Brandr
…
It was a strike to her senses,
encompassing them in his fantasy of her.
Come, Ashling, there is room for
you
…

It wasn’t that she was
tempted by him, she didn’t want him, but her primal soul wanted what he
offered. Her arousal wept, swarmed as she was by sensations so vivid that
seconds passed before she could think straight, before she could believe that
she wasn’t the one bound for their pleasure. As Brandr soothed the quaking
female, Ash swore she felt hands brush her skin.

This mental mojo was good.

Brandr’s fingers brushed the
girl’s lower belly and Ash’s clenched, feeling rough skin stroke her stomach.
She swallowed a moan, eyes fluttering closed, letting herself swim in the
tactical illusion the wolves were feeding into her head. Strong hands dragged
her back to a broad chest and she encouraged the ridge of arousal pressing to
the small of her back, liking the fantasy reaction and the hitch of breath she
imagined she heard. Her brain fuzzed with a bolt of lust.

God, the wolves were really
good ...

‘Do you like what you see
,
Ashling?’ The low-gravelled timbre of the voice caressing her ear was
unmistakable. MacTire. Her whole body flinched, dulling her aroused flush to
chilling mortification.

Fuck.

What she’d thought were
impressions of hands, fed to her by Brandr’s lust, were very real, restraining
her against the mass of the King’s body. She struggled, her hips canted
forwards, as far away as she could get in his shackling grip. Might as well
have been a worm on a hook for all the good it did her. ‘Let go of me
,’ she demanded,
‘t
his is disgusting.’

The sound in the back of his
throat was a tut of disapproval, his hold on her only tightening, letting her
feel the blazing heat of him. ‘I would love to join you, to give you what you
desire,’ coal-black eyes fell on the pack where they ravaged the woman to
ecstasy, ‘you are promised to them, when I am done with you, but now that you
are in my possession, I find myself questioning whether I am prepared to share
you.’

‘I am not some possession you
can just take ownership of,
Mac
.’ Her lip curled, mocking and obstinate.

‘Do not deny your nature, my
Queen. You want to be in her shoes. I can feel it, taste it on you.’ The tip of
his tongue ran a wet shiver up the column of her throat. Broad hands dipped
into the hollows of her hipbones, meeting just above the apex of her thighs,
fitting her back, flush against the iron ridge of his erection. An inch lower
and the bastard would feel just how right he was. She squirmed, deflecting him
when he would have taken that inch. He growled and she froze mid-struggle,
slowly putting space between her ass and his arousal. What she saw as a fight
to get free was a grind to him, and he was responding to the friction as only
an animal could.

Primitively.

‘You repulse me.’ Ash was
turned-on and he made her hate it. ‘So why do I feel this way?’
she asked.

‘I feel it too,
’ Mac replied,
‘
because we are tethered by blood,’ stubble grazed the
bare skin of her shoulder where he planted his lips, ‘and because you are
mine.’

‘I told you already, you
don’t own me.’ Ash strained to break free of his touch, convincing herself it
was defiance warming her and not the way he played her nerves. ‘What do you
mean tethered by blood?’

‘I mean your blood is inside
me. We share a physical link, Ashling. I am attuned to your desire, as you are
to mine.’

Oh yeah, she could feel his
desire.

Something flickered across
her thoughts: Doc Rob, at the hospital, taking samples for ‘research.’ Connal
asked if they’d taken her blood, told her they could track her through it.
‘Wait up a second here. Are you saying you drank my blood?’
Bad enough I’m
trapped in an undergound hole with a pack of sex-crazed werewolves, but now I
have to deal with vampires too?

‘Mmmmm ...’ He growled,
running his nose behind her ear, inhaling the scent of her hair, but the
asshole didn’t answer her question. He didn’t have to, because the words he did
speak resonated a memory that threw her right back to the forest floor where
she’d first heard them in her head. ‘I can feel you, Ashling DeMorgan. You are
inside me. You are mine.’

Clarity was a shaft of light
through clouds of confusion. The spontaneous orgasmic combustion, the temptress
she had become, goading Connal into fucking her that very first time. ‘Oh my
God … It was you! In the forest. What have you done to me? Do you think you can
turn me into one of your zombie sex-bots, like you did with her?’

On cue, the girl came again …
Loudly.

‘She is nothing compared with
you, Ashling. The tie exists because you are wolf. Already your mind is bonding
with the pack. You can’t deny you feel their thoughts.’

She was fighting to deny it,
but it was all horribly true. She couldn’t even look away.

‘And we did not make the
pathetic female
thrall
. She has your precious Connal to thank for that.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Her
brow creased. His hands moved over the tension in her body, raising shivers.

‘Your lover was the one who
bit her, and left her bound and gagging over a desk in our club. We took care
of her.’

Disbelief rattled through her
like a chill wind. ‘You’re lying. Connal wouldn’t ...’