The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (90 page)

‘No.’ Ash growled into the
silence that dropped after Madden’s request.

It was a sly move, dragging
them up to Liath’s room to see how precarious her condition was, before
dropping the bomb.

Another growl came from the
adjoining room where the hound, curled up beside Josh’s sleeping form, curled
its lip at her. She answered with a baring of teeth. Her mind was shutting
down, the primal, possessive instinct that claimed Connal as hers clawing to
the forefront. Watching the room through the blood-red curtain of her vision,
she was finding it hard to care that she was giving in to it.

‘Ash, it’s the only way.
Please. She needs something or she’ll-’ Madden’s words were drowned out by a
snarl and he snapped his mouth shut quickly.

‘I can’t.’ She was being
selfish, but the beast inside her couldn’t understand that. All it knew was
that someone was asking her mate to bite another female. ‘If he does-’ Her eyes
flicked to Connal as he took a wary step forward. ‘- I won’t be able to stop.’
Fur was a pressure beneath her skin, twisting. She made herself look at Josh.
Small and innocent, he was wrapped around the wolfhound puppy, unaware of the
tension rising in the room. If she let go, he’d suffer. That was unacceptable.
Ash dug her claws into her palms and pain bit up her arms, but it grounded her.
It made her feel more human, to hurt.

‘Ash?’ Connal’s bare chest
blocked out her vision of Josh as he closed the door between the rooms. His
broad body crowded her back into a corner and the beast subsided, happy being
penned in by his warmth.

‘I’m sorry.’ She raised her
voice so she spoke to the entire room from her Connal cocoon. Looking up from
beneath her lashes, her next words were for Connal only. ‘I can’t let you do
it.’

His face was soft, his
fingers brushing a curl from her face. He was quiet for so long. ‘I don’t want
to do it, Ash.’

‘I can hear a but,’ she
interrupted when furrows appeared between his brows.

‘But,’ his lips quirked at
the corners, ‘I’m not seeing another option here. Liath won’t survive until
full moon without it.’

He didn’t have to tell her
that. She knew what was at stake.

‘
I’ll
do it,’ Ash said
suddenly.

Why hadn’t she thought of it
before? ‘I’m as wolf as you are. Or does it need to be guy
eitr
?’

‘It shouldn’t matter,’ Madden
said from somewhere over Connal’s shoulder. 'It’s the same chemical substance.'
Hope made his voice higher and it trembled.

Connal was watching her, the
heat of his gaze flushing her cheeks. ‘What?’ she muttered at him, risking a
look under her lashes.

‘Are you sure you can do it?’

‘Bite her? Yes. Hell, with
the way she tried to crawl up on you, I could do more than that.’ She pressed
her finger to his lips when he went to speak. ‘But … I don’t actually
want
to hurt her, Connal. I can bite her without tearing her head off. I can.’

He stared at her, measuring
the strength of her words. She smiled at him and he palmed her nape, drawing
her close to kiss her forehead. ‘Alright, Ash.’

From a corner of the room,
Connal watched Ash as she perched on the edge of Liath’s bed and drew the long
mane of her dark hair over one shoulder. Liath panted, lax and needy with
anticipation, as though she sensed them in the room, but was too weak to react.
Ash leaned in and spread her pink lips across the delicate skin of Liath’s
throat. Connal’s lids drifted to half-mast, hypnotized by the sight of her
sharp, white canines dimpling Liath’s pulsing flesh. With the threat of
penetration, Ash’s throat bobbed on a swallow and he could taste her nervous
hesitation. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be getting off on this, but damn, he
was a man, and this was his mate, performing an act of intimacy with another
woman. His body would have to be paralysed not to respond. Grunting quietly, he
readjusted the towel on his hips, concealing the rock-hard evidence that he was
well and truly cured of that ailment. He cast a sidelong glance at Madden and
caught him running his fingers under the collar of his shirt. A sudden movement
in his peripheral vision whipped his attention back to Ash.

It was Liath who struck,
clutching fistfuls of Ash’s hair and crying out as she arched her throat and
impaled herself on her fangs. Held fast in the crook of Liath’s neck, Ash
growled into her flesh as the blonde jerked in ecstasy, milking her for the
drug her body craved. Feral thrashing calmed to seductive grinding as she got
her fix, her body softening, wrapping around Ash’s and pulling her closer.
Liath moaned and the noise was pure sex. Her hips rocked up, her lips finding
Ash’s fingers, her pink tongue laving and suckling while she sought friction
for the heat at her centre. She curled around Ash’s leg, grinding her sex to
the bare thigh she had trapped.

‘Enough,’ Connal snarled,
lunging to untangle Ash from Liath’s clutches and drag her away from the bed.
She swung about and came to a shaky halt, staring up at him. Her glassy eyes
were tinged with red, her cheeks flushed, hair snagged and wild. She was feral,
a tinderbox of sex pheromones that sparked a fever in his blood.

Throbbing, he swept her up in
his arms and ignoring Liath’s whines of protest, carried her out of the room
and over the threshold into another.

'I’m sorry, Little Red, but
this is going to be rough.'

Slamming the door closed, he
tossed her, face down, like a rag doll onto the chintz bedspread.

When she made to crawl away,
he hitched her ass up by the belt of her housecoat and hauled her back down the
bed.

'Where do you think you're
going?' he growled. Yanking the belt from her waist, he tore the quilted
monstrosity off her back and ran a possessive hand down the curve of her naked
spine. She arched in response.

He kicked her legs wide with
his knees and the towel fell from his hips.

'Gods, yes,' he groaned at
the sight of her glistening, swollen lips. Grasping the sweet mounds of her
ass, he drove himself hilt-deep into her tight, wet heat.

She clenched around his girth
and kicked back against his abs, forcing him so deep that she whimpered and
gouged her claws into the bedspread. His growl of approval was guttural and,
fingers imprinting the flesh of her ass, he answered by pumping, hard and
ruthless, inside her. Hips pistoning, abs tight, he slapped up against her
buttocks, watching the thick girth of his cock slide in and out of the tight
glove of her sex, glossed in her arousal.

But it wasn’t enough.

‘Give me your eyes,’ he
demanded, withdrawing only long enough to flip her onto her back.

She did.

And if looks could burn, he
was raw, smouldering possession.

His gaze never left hers as
he grasped the backs of her legs and spread her wide. He dropped to his knees
and his tongue parted her cleft in a long, velvet stroke. Her thighs trembled
as he sucked at her clit, growling into her flesh, watching all the time as the
torment played out on her face.

She was already hovering on
that sweet, bladed edge when he reared up, hooked her knees, and slammed back
inside her. Ash came up off the mattress with a howl, her eyes still locked
with his. Blistering pleasure tore through her body in waves so hard, they
bordered pain. She’d never get enough of him.

Long strokes cleaved her,
inner muscles fisting tight around the rigid length of his cock as he hit deep
and she arched for deeper. She mewled at the friction, sparks flitting along a
circuit of hyper-aware nerve-endings, broadcasting erotic pulses to every inch
of her. His rhythm was relentless, passion blazing so hot that its embers
licked along her skin and settled red fire in his eyes.

Ecstasy tightened her lower
body.

‘Connal ...’ Growling his
name, Ash pleaded, sinking her claws into his hard thighs. He punished her in
quick-fire strokes that stole her breath and twisted her core with vicious
pleasure. She detonated on a visceral howl, her orgasm so hard and strong, it
lifted her up in a fiery wave and the only tether she had was Connal. His
snarls surrounded her while she soared, quaking in bliss, the rippling power in
his body unleashed as he snapped his hips to lock with hers, finding his own
release, burying the hot pulses of his passion inside her.

He was sheened in the
lightest layer of sweat, his powerful chest heaving with ragged, snarling
breaths, fangs so long he couldn’t shut his mouth, and Ash thought he’d never
looked so magnificent. Or so animal.

‘I should bite girls more
often,’ she laughed huskily.

‘I’m not sure we’d survive a
rematch,’ he said, stretching out alongside her in all his gloriously hard
nakedness.

‘I can’t bear the thought of
any other woman touching you,’ she breathed. ‘Makes me want to rip their hearts
out.’

‘No killing,’ he smiled
lazily against her lips. ‘I need to get that knife.’

‘Yeah, and I need to speak
with this Master guy, to find out how we use it,’ she said.

Ash pulled again at the
sprayed-on dress. The way her ample curves spilled out of it bordered on
obscene and she cursed Sadhbh’s wardrobe. The stretchy LBD was the only thing
she’d been able to squeeze into and she was only good as long as she didn’t
breathe or bend over.

Connal almost hadn’t let her
out of the door, but she’d argued strongly that she was their only viable
option. He was still public enemy number one as far as the
thegn
were
concerned, and Madden was on their most-wanted list for aiding and abetting
Connal’s escape. Besides, somebody needed to stay at the farmhouse to guard the
human refugees against the return of the mutant. That’s what swayed him in the
end. After all, how dangerous could this Master guy be, compared with Doyle’s
latest incarnation?

Giving up on wrangling the
fabric to cover more flesh, Ash turned her attention to where they were going.
This part of Dublin was alive with tourists. She and Madden jostled in amongst
the people crossing the Halfpenny Bridge, breaking free to dip under the
archway into the cobbled alleyways of Temple Bar. At least the knee-high riding
boots she’d borrowed didn’t have crazy skyscraper heels. Navigating cobbles
would have been hell.