Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Black, Paula

  Thighs that were embracing him now, no struggle to pin, only to grind harder. He’d set her aflame and she was burning wildly out of control in his hands. Feeling the frictioning strain of his zipper, she drove down with her hips, ached to make rough circles as she melted through the thin fabric of her sweats. Hardly protection, right now, they were too much. She panted aroused frustration to the space between them. She needed him naked, mourned the loss of his mouth as she forced herself from their kiss on a gasp from swollen, bruised lips. Her breasts, bereft of his warmth, chilled to the air and her nipples ached a protest. Left unattended, she throbbed. His low moans of confusion protested the wrenching away of the wet heat of her mouth, while she set to her struggle with his clothing ... No stopping ...

  Skin bared, spine arching, a feline under the rough palms that owned her body, Ash tugged on his zipper so hard she thought she’d rip the thing right out of the fabric, but it didn’t budge. Come on! She needed skin.

  Her fingers hooked into the neck of his shirt, hauling him back to her mouth with a satisfying growl and a cracking rip as fabric gave under the clawing of her lust. Grrrrrr ... Her own passion amused her, the strength of an emotion she usually couldn’t stoke up enough to want to kiss someone, had poured out of her. And all it had taken was an intruder, a frying pan and rough hands.

  Ooooh, skin!!! Her eyes caught the flash and her fingers latched onto the breadth of golden flesh exposed by her desperate touch, splaying over the taut muscles of his chest and dipping inside. If he got to touch, Ash was damn well not going to be denied. She grasped ... Metal? ... Yes ... Small hoops pierced through his nipples and her smile was hungry on his lips, her fingers hooking in and tugging hard in a twist that ripped a snarl from his mouth and shot her gaze to watch. He liked that. She did it again, hips winding, shimmying to help him divest her of her sweats, scorched and molten, a volcano of need strung tight and ready to ... Freeze.

  The crack of ice as it formed should have been audible, it spread so quickly to chill her ardour, imprisoning her in a frozen block of terror that stopped her heart and stamped it into a roaring Grand National gallop of panic. Like a hammer to the face, Ash jolted and jerked, from fire to ice, the flames between her thighs recoiled, extinguished by a brand she saw every night on the waves of darkness.

  She’d never thought to see it again. Not on living flesh and blood, anyway. Dream bodies didn’t count. But it was here, larger than life laying between her thighs. A tattoo scarred straight into muscle. A stylised, Celtic wolf.

  Death, how she remembered it.

  ‘No...’ She was talking to the man beneath her, but she was addressing the demons that swooped down with cackling glee to steal the carnality from her and turn her whimpered mewls of ‘Oh God ... yessss ...’ into ‘no, no, no...no...’ Undulations switched to frantic, thrashing attempts at escape, a different kind of wildness borne from the shadows. Her insanity sure made her nightmares gorgeous.

  ‘What exactly is your problem, Beautiful?’ Connal’s heartbeat hammered out a protest, battling to keep pace with the sudden, dizzying deceleration. The words came out on a growl that was ragged as the torn shreds of his shirt. She was staring at him, bright eyes wild with terror, a grey pallor draining porcelain cheeks of what little colour they had, as though she’d seen a ghost.

  Sensing the tension in her body, Connal backed off. The sexual heat that had sizzled between them not a moment before shrivelled and died, leaving only the hostile scent of fear hanging in its wake. This was Karma’s idea of a bitch slap, payback for leaving that girl trussed up in her panties back at the club. He knew it.

  Dragging his ass back until his shoulders hit the wall, he pinned her in the hard glare of his breathless frustration. Sure, he liked it rough and edgy, but if there had been a sexual predator in the room, it had most definitely not been him. Not this time. Unless ... He found himself running his tongue over the cutting edge of his upper teeth. Nope. No fangs. His shit was so unstable these past days, he was starting to second guess even his most basic instincts.

  ‘Get away from me!’

  Damn, this girl was one scream from a straight jacket and a padded cell. Her wild stare was fixated on the brand of the wolf etched into his chest, and there was recognition in her eyes. Somewhere in his lost thoughts, a penny dropped. Jesus. She knew what he was.

  ‘What are you doing in Anann DeMorgan’s house?’ He eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘Granddaughter ...’ The word was thready as hell and she sucked in a breath as the syllables whispered out. Breathe, Ash, breathe. You die and they win.

  Impossible. Yet somewhere in the dark corridors of long-filed memories, a small light flickered, too weak to kindle the spark of recall. Connal found himself looking at the crazy girl differently, seeking out a resemblance. But those soft, vulnerable features had little in common with the hard-edged, calculating face of the old woman. Maybe, in Anann’s younger years... but those weren’t memories Connal wanted to touch with a ten foot pole.

  Granddaughter. Holy shit. If it were true, then this one really was different.

  Nan DeMorgan, bang on the money, once again. How irritating was that? Nan DeMorgan, who would have his bollocks in a jar if she knew how close he’d been to making the beast with two backs with her precious bloodline. Damn, just the thought of pissing her off made him wish she’d actually gone through with it.

  If she was who she claimed to be, and Connal was seriously struggling to reconcile how such a hybrid could ever have come into existence, but if she was the real deal, she might even stand a chance, unlike the others ...

  Addressing her like she was a cornered animal, he tapped a hand to the wolf branded into his chest. ‘You’re afraid of me. Because of this, right?’

  She couldn’t peel her eyes away, couldn’t blink, damn it, she couldn’t even gather breath enough to scream, the sound lodged in her throat and strangled her. He was talking but only certain words filtered through, her brain on a dimmer switch, dizzying out and coming back on in flickers. Her heart was one beat away from hammering itself right out of her chest and flip-flopping on the ground until that demon from her nightmares gobbled it off the floor in the guise of an intruder.

  ‘You’re here to kill me.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Get out ...’ Not even a mouse would obey such a weak, reedy line of command. But here she was, expecting tall, dark and probably homicidal to just up and leave her be.

  ‘Get out!’ Slightly stronger, her entire body was pulsing with her frantic heartbeat, her skin chilled under the cold sweat of fear. He needed to leave. She needed to pass out.

  He scrubbed a hand down the rough stubbled line of his jaw, coolly observing this fascinating new thing from beneath hooded eyes. DeMorgan’s own flesh and blood, home alone, and cowering under the mark of the wolf. Well fuck me sideways. What was the old bitch playing at? Luring her own blood to this godforsaken place. Like ... bait. He was more than ready to take a bite out of her. MacTire would eat her alive. Sense won out. Yanking up the zipper of his leathers to hide the ravaged mess of his shirt, he ran his fingers down the thin silver chain around his neck and grasped the engraved disc, stroking the cool metal along his lower lip. Head tilted slightly to one side, he took a long, last look.

  ‘This isn’t finished, Angel.’

  He turned his back on her and did the one thing he excelled at. He walked away. Not from a fight, never that. The heart-pounding, mind-numbing aggression was one of the few emotions he openly embraced. But attachments were a liability he simply refused to entertain. And yet, even as the front door closed on the bizarre encounter, he felt the tug of something deep stir inside of him. Something primal and addictive. The promise of a high more powerful even than the violence that breathed life into his jaded existence. No, this definitely wasn't finished.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She collapsed. For a second, or damn, it could have been an hour, the world was as black as the shadows, her eyes blinkered down,
her body on a slump, weak of energy and huddled where he left her. Shit. He left. He left her and he didn’t touch her ... God, how she’d wanted him to touch her. Stupid, stupid, Ash!! Urging your nightmare to just climb up on you and hump you ‘til you scream. Solid plan at defeating those demons! Great, she was mocking herself now, a straight ass berating in the dizzy darkness that threatened to swallow her whole and spit her out some days later. Something cold touched her cheek and she flinched, curling in on herself, fearing the worst. The wet kiss of a chilled, blood-stained blade, an icy claw ... a doggy nose, gently snuffling worriedly at her scrunched face. She batted her hand, pushing the soft muzzle away and was rewarded for her aliveness by an attack of warm drooling licks.

  ‘Silly, mutt. You couldn’t have come when I was being invaded? Fat lot of good you are, you can’t even keep the wolves from my door ...’ Muttering about shitty guard-dogs, Ash pulled herself up into a sit and cautiously let her eyes wander, seeking out a hulk of man in the shadows, but he’d gone. The wolfhound settled his weight into her side, following her gaze with curious brown eyes and a cock of that large, silver head. ‘Now you choose to protect me? When the psycho has gone?’

  Ruffling his fur, her exasperated sigh was shaky with adrenaline, rough with fear and she pushed off with the dog as leverage for her wobbling limbs, winding her fingers into moonlight pelt as they padded warily as one to check the bolt on the door. Latched. Trembling fingers secured the chain and turned the key and petted the door as though a kind touch could persuade the bulk of wood to keep any further demons from her threshold. And keep her from groping any other burglars that might wander into the hoarder's paradise she found herself tied to. Any number of people could be living among the stacks. Maybe that’s where he’d come from. She’d moved just enough paper to uncover his den and he had to kill her. Like the tribes in the Amazon rainforest. Except her pygmy warriors were giant man mountains that somehow bore the mark of her past. Mmmhmm. And tomorrow she would admit herself into the nearest insane asylum and blame it all on an inhaled poison fungi spores.

  Shit.

  Her breath was still coming harsh, ragged with the embers of lust clinging to sensations that had ripped through her ice queen impression like flaming lightning. Ash could taste fear, a thick fuzz on her tongue that scraped against the flavour of him with every swallow. It was as familiar as her precious energy drinks to her now, the acrid bite of acid. Fear. Like the Hulk, she never truly broke, because she was in a constant state of on-edge fracturing. Chipping away at her every day, the splinters, the cracks in the barriers her therapy had set up were widening. Dublin had stuffed a crowbar in the smallest one and was prying it open. And that tattoo, that damn Celtic wolf had cranked something wide open and let the darkness out.

  A whine broke through the sound of her breathing, the thump of a tail beating against her leg drew her gaze from where it had fixed on the loop of chain sealing the outside world from her, down to the hound wide-eyeing it up at her with a puppy dog beg for attention.

  ‘How about you come to bed with me and you can hunt the wolves if the Sandman lets them in?’ Another tail wag swished against her ankle and Ash about faced and took the steps with her furry guardian at her heels, navigating through piles of antiquities and occult nick nacks until she broke into the relative serenity of the bedroom. It couldn’t have been her grandmother’s, it was too pristine, in gentle shades of blue and black, a large bathtub in the centre of the room. A giant mahogany four poster and a light layer of dust that Ash had quickly cleared, once she’d unearthed a vacuum cleaner and rag. She’d slowly bled into this room, slowly settled, her clothes creeping out to fill the empty wardrobe, cosmetics and books littering the dark wood desk set solidly against one wall. There was so much space and Ash stripped in a layer of sweats and tank top, bare-assed to enjoy the open plan of the room and its sparse furnishings, so at odds with the rest of the house, it was like stepping through a wormhole into an entirely different place. Modern and ancient in perfect harmony.

  She could breathe here. Pretend for as long as she was there that it wasn’t Dublin outside her window, but Cambridge. She wasn’t in a house full of strange totems; she was in an upscale apartment, free of everything. With a twirl, Ash stamped down the strain of fear, shook off the feeling of his hands, his tongue, his skin and weight upon her. She dove onto the bed, a free fall that turned into a caterpillaring roll in the sheets, cocooning herself in the gentle silk safety of the covers with a pounce of dog paws bouncing all over her cuddled up form.

  ‘Settle, mutt, or I’ll rethink my need for a bed mate ...’ Ash scruffed behind his ears as his giant head landed, panting, on her stomach, pillowing himself there, his body folded out across the other side of the bed. ‘And you need a name.’ Drowsy now, the words felt heavy on her tongue, her eyes locked to the ceiling, watching the occasional shadow dance across the Robin-egg blue painted into the stippling.

  Her eyes drooped and the night took the opportunity to steal a figure into her bedroom. Black crossed her lidded vision; fur caressed her hands and weighed her down. A kiss silenced her scream with a hot-tongued invasion that took her mouth and rested a familiar pinning mass between thighs that spread far too eagerly at such a touch. He was back! Ash moaned, a low sound as her hands snaked up the broad expanse of her phantom intruder’s back, sculpting naked muscle with her fingertips and pulling him closer. Crazy, she was crazy but the heat had her in its grasp, fending off the chill of an oncoming nightmare with a hard grinding pleasure, crept from the fire of a desire gone to ice. It sparked up, in that safe place between sleep and waking, to slick arousal between her thighs. She half-hoped she wasn’t dreaming as she succumbed to the feel of her feral intruder. He was at her throat, speaking to her pulse in marking kisses that would blush bruises to her heartbeat, his palms urging her thighs wider, grazing as his thumbs massaged small circles up, higher, covering her in rough thrusting hips and solid muscle her hands felt free to once more explore. Fingers toyed with the rings hooked through his flesh, pulling as they had done, arching up. Possessed by the lust that had gone so cold under her fear, desire rose in a sweltering infusion of arousal to sheen her skin in a thin glisten of sweat.

  She let go, the darkness had come to her when awake, so now? Ash immersed herself in this break in reality; let herself feel something other than paralysing fear. She let her imagination work the heat of a brief carnal encounter into a fuel for pleasured dreams and prayed the fire that had roared between them in his presence could keep the demons away in his absence.

  Ash could be close here, safe, steady in the belief that it was all a dream and she could finish what they started without the debilitating terror that had sent her spiralling into a hell of her own creation. He seemed so real, and what her eyes didn’t see, her mind substituted, bare skin on skin. He was perfection between her thighs, wild and animal, thawing the ice of her nightmares, a threat, a protection … if only in her sleep.

  But no good thing lasts forever and she was pushing it, deeper into this erotic meeting she’d conjured with no way of getting out quickly. She was getting lost, so lost that when fur brushed her skin again she didn’t notice it under the fire of his touch, the thick grind of his body within hers ... until it was too late. Hands that had caressed her now shredded her skin with claws curved and razored. Serrated teeth bore into her flesh and tore to get to her life. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! This wasn’t what happened, this hadn’t happened. It’s not how it goes!! When her dreams changed, Ash knew to really fear. Because instead of being small, and helpless, a little girl in a red cape, she was thrashing under a mob of furry bodies, looking into wide, sparkling sapphire eyes as she reached out a hand bloodied and flayed. Get out!! They wouldn’t notice, they couldn’t notice. She fought as jaws snapped at her clothes and buried in her skin, a cacophony of howling yips and excited growls as she begged, pleading for the figure that huddled sobbing in the corner to do something. But he never did. Her stepfather had watched, enthra
lled by the fury of so many as they ravaged over her, a ball of darkness consuming her in their bloodlust.

  The angle was new. And Ash put it down to the lust that had laid her out. She couldn’t feel young under all that heat. So the demons had given her another body, one she knew almost as well as her own. One she had cuddled up to, whose shrieks of horror had once been the soft voice that read her bedtime stories. One whose terror screamed within her bones and charged up her nerves to high pitched wails of agony. She was her own mother, in a cage of death, with her younger self watching on as she slowly bled her life on to the whitewashed wood floors. Before she was whisked away by a flurry of wrinkled hands dragging her from Hell.

  And all the while, the man who had let death into her house, for her dreaming brain told her the story every time she slept, the man who was supposed to protect her like a daughter, who had loved her mother, cowered, fingers stuffed in his ears. The stylised wolf was a guard over his heart, a mark that kept him from the jaws that took her mother.

  Fur brushed against her face and it was the last straw for her terror. She clawed her way into waking, kicking and screaming, breath sawing, skin sweaty with an icy fear. The sheets battled back, winding slippery silk around her limbs and spider-webbing her into a flail of trapped hysteria. Ash was breathing fur in her panic; it was in her mouth, gagging her, muffling her, stifling, killing.

  Dog. No sea and feral musk, no coppery tang of blood. Just ... dog.

  Her hands wrapped around the massive head pushing against her face and she inhaled on a choked sob. It was her mutt, just her mutt. He lay over her, crushing her chest and rasping the tears from her face every time they fell, until she exhausted her fear in a tirade of jagged breaths and just held him close, a giant teddy bear that didn’t protest when her arms tightened. It was a temporary break, ice thawed, cracking, and giving way to tears that rarely came to fall.