The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (40 page)

Delicate female hands snaked
over MacTire’s shoulders to toy with the piercings in his chest. A low growl
bubbled up from his throat.

‘Will you fuck me, my Lord?’
The
thrall
’s lips pressed to the blond scruff of his jaw, her hair
spilling across his neck as she crushed her breasts to his back. She tugged on
his metal, a symbol of the King’s royal blood, and one he had ripped from his
own blód-brother’s flesh out on the sands...

‘Find another,’ he said
gruffly, detaching the
thrall
from his back. She wasted no time, sliding
into Brandr’s waiting lap. MacTire pushed away from the table and strode from
the hall with purpose. There was only one female who hardened his cock this
night, and she was waiting for him in his bedchamber.

‘Goddamn.’ Madden fired the
stones against the rock face and they pinballed around the small cave where he
was holed-up. Marooned in this freezing hellscape of blood and brimstone, and
you think he could start a fire? No joy. He kicked at the painstakingly
gathered pile of driftwood tinder and drew the silky robe tighter about his
shivering body, but without its sash, the damn thing just flapped open again.
No doubt, the great hulk of macho boy-scout slumped in the corner could have
whipped up a blaze with a click of his arrogant fingers, were he alive. Madden
had given up checking his vitals days ago. He doubted the big bastard was ever
going to come round, and if he did, the doctor was going to have to pray that
his knot-tying excelled his, lets-face-it, non-existent fire-starting skills.

How he’d even dragged that
mammoth body across the sand before the harpies got to them was a minor bloody
miracle. He was deranged, should have just taken his punishment like a good
runt and grovelled his way back into the King’s favour. The Lord and Master
loved nothing more than a good ass-kissing.

MacTire's blurted confession
about Aoife had rendered Madden temporarily insane. Just as sure as they’d
eviscerated Connal Savage, the King’s claim had ripped everything Madden
thought he’d known of his world inside out and dumped it on its head.

A dark shadow passed across
the entrance to their cave and Madden huddled into himself. There was no sun to
mark the days and nights in this subterranean pit, only the diurnal plummet in
temperature that piled an extra helping of misery on his already pitiful state.
The Raveners seemed to like it. As the chill descended, the gargoyles stirred
to life, stretching their immense wingspans across the blood-red sky. They knew
he was in here, had smelled him out the first night. They were simply biding
their time, playing cat and mouse with the infinite patience only an immortal
could fathom.

Yep, he should have swallowed
his damn pride. Not like his precious dignity was going to fill a growling
stomach, and hiding out on the high ground wasn’t going to get him the hell out
of Fomor either. It was going to get him killed.

D
ead to the world, she lay sprawled. Hair, midnight
silk, fanned across his sheets, the curve of her spine hollowing out to the
luscious mounds of her ass.
Exquisite
. Her thighs spread for him, just
enough to gift a glimpse of her sex. Even comatose she tortured him. ‘I have
waited long enough. I will have you.’

Tugging at the wolf’s-head
buckle of his belt, MacTire wrenched the strap, shucked the leather down his
thighs and loomed above her. Broad, heavily muscled and naked, he was fully
aroused. Prowling up the bed, canines throbbing, his mouth mapped the contours
of that perfect ass in growled breaths.

Head cocked, claws traced the
triskelion inked on her shoulder, hooking raven strands across her nape to
expose her throat. Razor-sharp, they grazed the thud of her heartbeat.
Proof
of life
. Her scent was a feast of ripe sexuality, begging to be plucked and
sucked and … Fuck, his cock was hard as a bat. His body pounded, ravenous.
Too-long denied, his teeth tested the tender skin of her throat. ‘You are
mine
,
little raven. You have always been mine. I
will
have you.’

Ash was lost in dreams,
cushioned by the spongy damp of moss under cheek, her body ravaged, caught up
in an erotic replay of trees and dirt and the powerful male at her back. She
could stay there forever, basking in the dreamy wisps of sensation, but a blade
was slowly ripping open the veil of sleep. It beckoned to her with sharp
kisses, coaxing her to surface from a darkness heavy with sensuality, the pool
of her dream lusts only deepening with the threat of pain.

'It's you,' she sighed.
Her body bowed,
exposing her throat in surrender to the kiss of his teeth, moans of submission
falling to the cloud-soft plush of the …
not moss …
pillows. His touch
radiated fire, their bodies grinding a language all carnality. Her core
clenched and she undulated off the mattress, guiding him, begging him to sink
deep inside her.
‘Yes. All yours Connal. All yours. You have me.’

His answering growl was her
only warning. A fist yanked her hair as teeth clamped hard on the flutter of
her captured heartbeat.

‘We do not speak that name
within these walls.’

‘Who ...?’ She rasped,
whimpering as her spine curved again, not on a grind, her fantasy had crumbled,
but in a struggle.

A kick split her thighs wide,
permitting a hand to explore her swollen flesh, glossing fingers in her
arousal.

‘So fucking wet … for
me
,’
he murmured, a groan escaping his throat as the rage retreated, only to
coalesce into the animal that was his lust. ‘It is
me
you desire.’

Her heart hammered as his
grip tightened in her hair.

‘The cur who poisoned you
will not bother us again.’

Oh God.
Her body was so obedient in its panic, it gave this
stranger exactly what he wanted. Her resistance excited him. She fought the
stroke of his hands as he kneaded her flesh. Ash recoiled, only to have her
wrists caught and her thighs pinned by his until she stopped thrashing out her
terror. She lay still when he rode his fingers through her soaked folds.

Even when he sat back and
released her to pull her hips up, she couldn’t move. Ash was displayed to a
gaze that stroked darkness to her most intimate flesh, and it only made her
wetter. Her body didn’t know whether to fight or fuck. Spine tightening, she
went rigid as her captor’s tongue curled a shivery lick to her ear. ‘Struggle
for me, My Queen. You will come harder in the end.’

Ash jerked violently in
protest. This was not a dream. This was not some sordid fantasy she'd thought
up in a sex-blissed stupor. She was wide awake and there were no dreads
tickling her skin, only a matted blond braid of hair pouring over her shoulder
as she lay prone and vulnerable at the hands of a stranger.

He was NOT Connal.

And yet her body burned like
he was.
Traitor.

She was riding the same high
that took her when Connal's bite had hurtled her into orgasm. She'd tasted it
and her body was aching for more. It gave him power. This stranger at her back
was mastering her need, her craving for Connal kept bright by his male
presence.

Wrong. It was all so wrong.

‘Please.’

Connal’s last words rang in
her ears, an ‘I love you’ that had tipped her into darkness. That was the last
thing she remembered, before light had been thrown on her dreaming mind and the
binds of sleep had become literal.

She was pinned, naked and
pleading for her captor to release her, not only from his hold, but from the
desperate ache that would not stop.

Her denial was vicious; the
heat remained. There was no dim on the carnal switch he’d turned to high, only
panic, fear, and a maddening arousal that licked her higher with the graze of
his teeth against her skin. It left her begging for the bite that would send
her flying.

The part of her that was
molten for this stranger was all animal. It turned her hands into claws and it
snarled around blunt teeth. It arched and cried to get him closer, as her body
flailed a dichotomy of pure fear and desire. She found herself pleading for two
things that should cancel each other out and left her begging up to
interpretation. ‘Please ...’

‘She begs. Perfect.’

A claw raked her skin, from
nape to lower back, and his sleek tongue lapped in its wake, rocking a shudder
down her spine.

‘I can taste your fear, and
the hunger that wars against it. Your blood is inside me, Ash-ling.
You
are
in me, your body wants this. Surrender your mind.’

His hand slipped between her
thighs once more, and this time, the tip of a claw hooked into delicate skin,
circling her pulsing clit. Ash bit down hard on the whimpers that rose and fell
with the kick of her curves, muffled into the pillows.

‘You will come, Ash-ling, you
will come hard, whether or not your mind permits it. I control your body now. I
tell you when.’

She trembled. Whoever this
man was, he kept her on an edge of pain and riding the primal sensation of
claws in her flesh. He commanded her ecstasy and it contemplated obeying, tense
and winding in her core.

Lust snapped up her spine
when the palm of his free hand connected with the soft cheek of her ass and she
cried out. Her hips jerked, tilted up for him, arching into the next strike.

She fought her own reactions,
the miscommunication between her brain and her body fizzling with static. Need
shot through her veins, the feather-light brush of his lips whispering to her
bruised skin. His touch had her thrashing. Half a fight for escape, it was a
futile plan, as though she could tear herself from something he controlled.
There was no wiggle room as his hands clamped her hips, she had to submit to
the wicked tease of his teeth, grazing the curves of her ass, nipping at
slap-tender flesh. A throaty hum left her lips. He had her lust on a leash and
it panted for him, obedient and wanton.

And then he put his mouth on
her and she was ruined. Hot and greedy, he sucked starved, savage kisses on her
slick flesh. He dragged her closer t
o
the edge of control as he
brutalised her sex with an attack of sensation too powerful to ignore, too
animal to fight off, too raw to want to fight off. Liquid arousal overflowed,
feeding the wet
tongue-rasp of his hunger as she rode his mouth in a
hard grinding circle. The torment spiked her high and left her hovering on
screams. Closer … closer ... ‘Please ...’ Somehow she knew: She wasn’t begging
for freedom now.