The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (7 page)

A light covering of clouds
blotted out the sun and she eventually returned home, barrelling through the
front door into the cool of the house. Out of breath and sheened in sweat, she
felt hot to her very core. His hands, those fiery,
light-her-up-and-melt-her-down hands, could have been on her skin again, and
she was damn sure she would have scorched her intruder with the flush rising
off of her body.

God, why was she thinking of
him now, of all times? Because the heat reminded her what he had felt like?
‘Damn. I’m more wired than you today, Setanta.’ Ash scruffed her newly-named
dog behind his ears. The hustling city crowds had had her herding the pup into
the shade of the General Post Office's giant columns for a breather. The mutt
discovered the bronze statue before she did, slobbering against the glass it
was housed behind. The Irish hero Setanta, who’d become Chú Chulainn, Cullen’s
hound. Seemed apropos and somehow, the name had stuck.

Far from Cullen’s hound, her
own beast of a dog was shifting restlessly at her side, slavering drool over
her hands. Ash wanted to keep moving and in the same breath, she wanted to
collapse there in the hallway and just lay until the world righted itself. She
couldn’t stay in another night, she couldn’t ... she probably should. With the
way she was vibrating, she’d be snatched up by the police for being drugged-up
or get caught by a guy with a giant butterfly net. As her brain spit up some
half-command to get out of the house, she caught her image in the mirror.

It was not good.

She looked like an extra from
The Walking Dead and she reeled back from the image to scold the dog peering up
at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I look one groan away from chowing down on your
brains?’ She couldn’t go outside looking like this. She’d be shot on sight.

Shower. She’d shower. And
then she’d wander. And hunt for food. The kitchen cupboards were bare and she’d
been too busy scarfing her way through everything like a junkie with the
munchies to even notice.

It was later than she’d
anticipated when Ash finally emerged from her house and set off, back towards
the centre of town. Freshly showered, hair brushed, a little makeup on and she
felt good. She felt ... sexy again. Like she was naked and dancing in the
mirror all over again. But in public.

I’m pretty sure that’s
illegal,
she thought
.

Ash crossed her arms over her
chest, protecting modesty that was already covered by the folds of her coat,
and tried her best not to hooker walk. She didn’t do the hip-swaying seduction,
the straight spine, shoulders back, boobs out strut that women seemed to adopt
when they were out. But she wanted to.

She didn’t know where she’d
wandered, maybe a mile from the bars, scanning for a place that was serving
something high in fat. She didn’t find any fast-food joints, only office type
buildings ... and a cute little piece of brick face and white-washed walls
called the Brazen Head. It looked like a tiny castle, a medieval tavern tucked
away between all the modern sprawl. The scents from it were more than divine.
She’d found food heaven.

She’d definitely found food
heaven. Half way through a bowl of onion rings that should have their own cult
worshippers, Ash had set herself up at the bar, a hot, whipped-cream-on-the-top
Bailey’s coffee and a pint of Guinness in front of her. The first, she’d
ordered. The second had been ordered for her. By some guy who still sat with
his buddies by the window, leering at her and revving himself up to approach.
She’d smiled her blushing thanks and quickly turned back to occupying her mouth
so she had some excuse not to talk or encourage his interest. She just wanted
to eat.

‘Damn, you’re putting that
away. Has someone been starving you?’ The pretty blonde waitress laughed as she
set another bowl at her side and spun off with Ash’s latest order.

Ash had never eaten so much
in her entire life but she couldn’t find the will to care about all the
calories. She just enjoyed, bouncing all the while to the music filtering
through the continuous stream of voices, trying to ignore the gaze that crept
over her body like hot fingers. Someone had their eyes on her. Intense,
powerful, heavy. It could be any one of the men in the room. But this one was
different. She tried, she really did try to ignore them.

‘Hey!’ She started, turned
wide eyes to the man at her ear and leaned back as he leaned in. ‘I like your
coat!’ He was yelling to be heard and she focussed on his mouth as he shaped
the words.

What was it about her damn
coat? She forced a smile, kind of flattered, even though half of her brain was
focussed on the waitress every time she appeared from the kitchen.

‘Where are you from?’ the guy
asked, his hand falling to her thigh. Ash flicked his touch off, feeling
greased like a pig in a wrasslin’ contest from the sudden pawing. She wasn’t a
goddamn petting zoo.

‘Cambridge, Massachusetts!’
She yelled back. He got all happy that she’d answered, and Ash dimmed her smile
a little.

‘Is that in England?’

Her brow quirked. Seriously?
She shook her head, letting her hair curtain her features and promptly picked
up another onion ring. ‘America,’ she said, and that was his shut down.

Her tone was solid, not
breathy and flirty. She didn’t like to think of England. His confused
expression was overshadowed by the arrival of her burger, and Ash was three
bites in when he wandered off, looking a little lost.

Like a fly, he came back, a
persistent nuisance obviously as thick in the head as he was around his middle.
He encroached on her space until she felt stifled, her burger-gasm delayed as
every chew and swallow was filled with a new topic of random conversation, his
every thought spoken aloud. Her words got terser, edged in steel as she batted
him from her presence with near growled irritation. She just wanted to eat her
burger.

C
onnal watched the young Polish waitress weave her way
through the crowd to his table. It was quite a display of balance and reflexes
to see how she dodged the randomly gesticulating punters caught up in the
Friday night revelry. She pulled it off with grace and an enthusiastic smile,
setting the pint of Guinness and fully loaded plate of Dublin Bay Prawns down
on the table in front of him.

‘Landed fresh off the boat
this morning,’ she said, shouting to make her accented words heard above the
clamour.

The Brazen Head was heaving,
layer upon layer of conversations creating the buzz that was the soundtrack to
pub culture in Dublin. Connal thanked the girl and tipped her generously for
the table. Discreet, tucked away in the shadows, it afforded him a direct
eyeline to the bar and the object of his attention for the night ... who
currently had some tall, dark and sleazy draping an arm over her shoulder and putting
his mouth to her ear on the pretence of making himself heard over the din.

The waitress, was hovering,
probably contemplating something reckless, like maybe asking out the cute,
scruffy guy who gave big tips and crooked smiles. She looked to be plucking up
the courage to speak to him again when a dangerous sound, that could only be
described as a growl, ripped from his throat, his handsome expression darkening
to a glower. She started, snapped from her brief moment of impulsiveness,
bundled up her tray and retreated back to the bar with considerably less grace
than when she had arrived.

Connal watched intently as
Ashling DeMorgan mouthed something to the guy, and Mr. Sleaze backed off. As he
did, Connal let go of the tension stringing his body. She sank her teeth into a
burger that was at least four times as big as her mouth. A smile hovered on his
lips and he turned his attention to his own plate, taking a long draft of the
bitter Guinness. He tapped the head of a giant prawn with the tines of his fork.
‘Don’t suppose you came across a crabby old woman’s brain out there in the bay,
Shrimpy?’ He picked up the big, ugly crustacean by its curled body and stared
down its beady black eyes, dangling the pincers in mid-air. ‘Is that you in
there, Anann?’ He danced the creature’s legs like some macabre puppet,
parodying Anann DeMorgan’s last, mocking, words to him. ‘Don’t play the cute
hoor with me, Connal Savage. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas
... and above all you will not fuck her ...’

Not fuck her, yeah. He lifted
darkly dilated eyes to the woman at the bar, lids dropping to half-mast as his
mind replayed how her hands had felt on his body, ripping, clawing, how he’d
come in the shower, on her command. She was oblivious to the weight of his
stare, chain-feeding chunky chips into her lush mouth. So far, he’d lived up to
the deal by watching her from a distance. He had motion sickness from watching
her. Sure, it was a rare latent that didn’t succumb to the highs of the moon
fever, but this girl? Energetic didn’t begin to cover it. She had spent the day
in a state of such giddy, perpetual motion that not even the mutt could keep
pace with her manic, energiser bunny impersonation. And all he could think
about was fucking her. Talk about reverse psychology. He doubted he’d have even
considered the fucking if Nan DeMorgan hadn’t planted that little timebomb of
an idea in his head. No. That was a bare-arsed lie, and he knew it. This girl,
Ashling, pushed all his buttons, tapped into his most primal of male instincts.

Speaking of, Mr. Sleaze was
back, sniffing around her, with his sticky, wandering hands. Connal ripped the
head off the prawn, tore away the legs and sank his teeth into the sweet flesh,
all the while glaring daggers across the crowded bar. He could garrotte that
bastard just for breathing her scent.

This night was seriously
starting to piss him off. Connal took out a measure of his aggression on the
unsuspecting food. The ravaged skeletons of the prawns littered the plate as,
one by one, he mentally decapitated the heads and tore the limbs from the
procession of tom-catting males who mauled her with their eyes. He drained the
pint glass, blotted his mouth on the napkin and pushed the plate away, but the
whole time he ate, his eyes never left the bar. Every leery expression and
drunken grope looked, to him, like justifiable homicide. He went for the pint
glass, found it empty, planted it back on the table in frustration, told
himself it wasn’t about her, it was because he was out of his natural
environment, cooped up in this crowded pub playing babysitter-slash-stalker,
when he should be out hunting.
Yeah, and would you like a side of denial
with your super sized plate of self-deluded bullshit, Sir?

He looked about for the
waitress, wondering why she hadn’t come back to ask if he wanted dessert. When
his gaze tracked back to the bar, Ashling DeMorgan was on the move. The napkin
fell to the floor as he stood, pushing his way through the jostling crowd,
following the back of her red coat as she headed toward the exit door.

Freedom.
She stepped into the cool night air and exhaled hard,
cuddling her red coat back around her. The darkness had closed in while Ash had
feasted, the moon fuller than her stomach and casting a natural street-lamp to
illuminate her way home. What had Connal Savage said to her about the full
moon? Tipping her head back to stare at the sky, tension rode up her spine and
an odd heat flushed her cheeks. She put it down to nerves as she stepped from
the relative safety of the crowded pub into the insane quiet of the street. No
one made a move to follow.