The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (80 page)

‘Do not let her go, Madden, I
swear to the Gods ...’

Connal locked his arms around
Ash from behind. ‘Nobody’s biting anybody, right Doc?’ He really hoped it
wouldn’t come to that.

‘No. In my car. I have some
vials left. I’m sure of it,’ he frowned, ‘I can’t have used it all.’

That can't be enough.

Ash side-eyed the tiny vials
in Madden's hand dubiously. He'd returned with such a small amount, and while
Ash's knowledge of
eitr
didn't go much further than the ecstasy of
Connal's bite and it's addictive properties, the doctor's precious stash hardly
seemed enough to sustain Liath through to the full moon. The way he worried the
opalescent blue substance in his fingers, like he was internally calculating
the volumes, and coming up short, only lent weight to her suspicions. She hoped
she was just misreading things.

Liath battled them the entire
time. When she wasn't trying to get her hands on Connal's cock, she was clawing
at their faces. Eventually, they got her pinned on the couch and still enough
that Madden could inject a full vial into her vein. The spasm that rocked her
body near broke their hold as Liath cried out, seizing and shuddering through
fits so strong, Ash feared she'd fracture something if she held onto her any
harder.

Blessedly, finally, Liath
fell silent and slumped into restfulness, sated and sleeping. They eased their
hands from her, one by one, and Ash stood by awkwardly as Madden covered the
other woman with a blanket. He was so tender, and she was intruding. This was a
thing for family. There was only one person missing.

Ash left quietly and with
gentle warnings, brought Josh back to sit with his mother. The boy had been so
patient. It broke her heart to see the worry crease his young face, his little
arms wrapping around Liath's sleeping form as he warily regarded Madden's hand
on his mom. Hooking her finger into Connal's belt loop, she pulled him out with
her. No one needed to witness the sad little family unit curled over Liath's
sleeping body. It made it all the more tragic, as she closed the door behind
them, that only Madden knew the truth.

Ash didn't say a word, just
tightened her hold on Connal's jeans and dragged him out of earshot. He
followed obediently, but she could feel his bemused smile and the weight of his
gaze on her body. It warmed her, even as she fought back her instincts, making
sure they were up the stairs and ensconced in the small bathroom before she let
loose.

‘You reek of her,’ she
growled, tackling him back into the shower enclosure, her claws making easy
work of his clothes. She shredded his tee until it hung off his shoulders in
tatters, and was only slightly more careful with his jeans. Ash attacked the
button, her nails raking his abs like she could skin Liath's scent off. The
urge to remove it from him was a fever in her blood and every second it was on
him made her a little wilder, and bolder. 'I can’t stand it.’

‘You’re sexy when you’re
jealous, Little Red.’ The amusement in his voice caught fire when she snatched
his zipper down and palmed him.

Her teeth snapped warningly
at his jaw and Ash squeezed a slow stroke up his length. ‘Are you getting off
on my pain, Big Bad?’

‘Maybe just a little.’
Connal's eyes glittered down at her, a sinful smile curving his lips.

He was wicked. She punished
him, rimming the head of his erection with a sharp nail.

He answered with a growl that
she felt all the way down, between her thighs.

‘You want to get me clean?’
he asked playfully, his hands jerking down to bite into her hips. ‘You know I
had a fantasy about you in my shower,’ he confessed, ‘the first night we met.’

She raised a brow at him and
flicked her tongue out to wet her lower lip. ‘Was I beating you senseless with
a frying pan?’ she teased.

Connal's barked laughter
shivered lust down her spine and she dragged the tatters of his shirt from his
chest to feel the vibrations. Her mouth found the spot above his heart and
suckled a hungry kiss to his skin. He groaned, clutching her hair and hauling
her closer. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you were torturing me with your mouth.’

One of her favourite things
to do to him. The noises he made ... God. Her core clenched.

‘Was I talking dirty, Big
Bad?’ Ash circled his scarred nipple with her tongue, loving the buck of his
hips against hers.

‘Oh no, Little Red, you were
innocence personified … but the dirty things you did with this mouth ...’ He
slipped his thumb between her parted lips and she sucked on it greedily before
releasing him with a hard nip.

She toed her boots off quickly
and undid the button on her own jeans, her lips never leaving his skin for
long. She needed the connection, needed him.

He jerked the sweater over
her head, breaking their contact only to toss it away and yank her back onto
his skin. When she looked up, his eyes blazed with crimson arousal.

‘You’re a dirty old man,’ she
teased, dragging her teeth over his collarbone and tugging his jeans down
blindly. They got trapped around his boots.

Laughing at her frustrated
growl, Connal made short work of her bra and the rest of their clothes. ‘I'm
old as fuck,’ he snarled, reining her to his mouth by her hair, ‘I don’t deny
it, but the filthy part is all your doing. Now come here,’ he growled.

She went, willingly.

Ash's mouth crushed to his,
luxuriating in the decadent taste of him. Her breasts mashed to his chest, the
scars on his skin abrading her nipples to tight, sensitive peaks. Her thighs
quivered at the teasing.

Flesh to flesh, his palms
roamed her full curves, soothing the jealous beast and sculpting the soft
swells of her breasts with hot, tantalising possession. She panted against his
lips, her hand slipping down to fist the heavy shaft of his arousal and
wringing a moan from them both. The wolf in Ash demanded he be covered in her
scent. It was non-negotiable.

Connal seemed to sense her
need. Cranking the shower into life, he spun her until they were submerged
under the spray, her spine cracked to the drenched tile in a surge of male
domination.

Ash arched on a throaty cry.
Trapped between the wall and his muscle, and surrounded by his heat, the water
barely touched her, his back taking the brunt of the hot pounding. He hitched
her thigh up to lock at his waist and she ground into him, hungry for friction
where she throbbed.

Her spine rode up the tile as
his large hands tilted her hips into the spray, opening her up to accommodate
the girth of his arousal. Ash spilled senseless sounds into his mouth when he
entered her. Soft and hard and slow and powerful, all at the same time, they
fit together so perfectly. His thrust buried him hilt-deep, welding their
bodies as one. Slick and hot as the sluicing waters, her core yielded to the
stretching claim that united them on a wet howl.

‘Fuck.’ Connal pistoned
inside of her, brutally fast and needy, their flesh slapping wetly in a
hard-ground, slamming dance. A primal sound, part moan, part growl, escaped his
throat.

She wanted to hear that sound
again. It was surrender.

Ash rode him harder, using
his shoulders for leverage and countering every exquisitely deep thrust with a
kick of her hips. Fire licked tongues of desire across her nerve endings. Arcs
of lightning sparked into the water around them, jolting at every point of
contact. Her tongue rasped after a droplet and her lips sealed over his pulse,
tasting. Her nails clawed his shoulders and spine, marking. She arched,
frictioning soft curves to muscled power, covering him in the scent of her.

He was so feral, so
beautiful. Connal’s canines were longer than hers. His lips were parted,
growling into the shower’s cascade as his rough palms spanned her waist,
pinning her for his thrusts. Ash mewled and he took her weight, her thighs
trapping him in a slick cradle.

‘Connal.’ Her mouth bruised
his skin and she purred when he threw his head back into the drilling spray. He
was driving her into the tile, relentless, surging penetrations that destroyed
her and flayed her with shattering pleasure. And yet, that motion was
submission. Connal bared his throat to her, a taut, pulsing offering.

‘Bite me, Ash.’

With pressure mounting in her
core like a tidal wave building offshore, Ash obeyed, letting go of the reins
as the beast inside her surged forwards. Her canines lengthened, snapping into
the corded column of his throat, sinking through flesh to lock them together in
a carnal circuit, she as deep in him as he was in her. It felt so right.

Connal howled, the sound
bouncing off the shower enclosure and vibrating through her cells, a primal
call that summoned her pleasure to a feverish crescendo.

Her brand was in his skin,
she was in his skin, any trace of the other female clawed and licked and bitten
from his body. He was hers.

Connal thickened inside her,
his teeth grazed the curve of her shoulder, and she detonated, splintering into
erotic dark matter as her orgasm razed her to the ground. Her fangs sank
deeper, clinging to him as his body drove to the heart of her. Pain shimmered
on the edge of her euphoria, and she revelled in it. His hips kicked,
stuttering erratically in the cradle of her thighs. His muscles bunched,
tightening across his shoulders and she clawed them, urging him on.

He fell with her, exploding
in a wild, growling release that shuddered through them both, an untameable
force of nature spasming through their drenched, fused forms, all violent euphoria
and infinite love.

Maybe the bite was a drug,
but he was hers. All of him.

She melted around him,
wrapping her fingers in the sodden strands of his hair to haul him closer.

His palms stroked wetly to
her face and she leaned into the contact, nuzzling while he sagged them to the
floor in a sated puddle.

Ash laughed. He made her
knees weak and she made his buckle. The scent of them infused the shower
cubicle. The heady satisfaction coiled blissfully through her as he dragged her
into his lap with a searing kiss. She fed on the contact, tasting the love he
branded to her soft, yielding mouth.

Inevitably, the water chilled
on their skin and with it, the contentment cooled in Ash’s blood. Reality crept
back into her sex-mussed mind with a reminder of what had driven them to crack
Liath’s bathroom tiles.

A soft whine escaped her
throat.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she said
quietly, as though he could be swayed.

His exhale was heavy at her
back and his arms tightened around her. Stubble brushed the hollow of her
throat in a bristled caress and his voice was low and defeated when he spoke.
‘This is something I have to do alone.’

She swallowed hard, grateful
he couldn’t see her face. ‘Are you going to kill Mac?’

Connal sucked on his teeth
and she felt the muscles in his jaw clench. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t live
with myself if I did, and neither could you. I’ve done bad things in my life
Ash. No more.’

Oh God, he was really
giving up on them.
Her vision
shimmered with angry tears. Screw nobility, she just wanted him alive. ‘Why
does it have to be this way?’ she pleaded.

‘Because that’s the bargain I
struck.’ He hung his head and she reached an arm back to stroke his nape.
‘Seemed like the perfect win-win at the time,’ he said. ‘You’d think I’d have
learned my damn lesson. I wanted revenge, for everything he did to me, and to
you. Buying our freedom was just sweetening the deal.’