by Black, Paula
BECOMING RED
The Becoming novels: Book One
JESS RAVEN & PAULA BLACK
Published by Raven & Black.
www.ravenandblack.blogspot.com
twitter @RavenandBlack
Copyright © by
Jess Raven and Paula Black
All rights reserved.
ISBN:978-0-9574846-1-0
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Becoming Red is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents other than those in the public domain are the products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Front cover images: Copyright Serg Zastavkin, SVLuma, Jures 2012
Back cover image: Copyright Aleksandr Petrunovskyi 2012
All images used under license from Shutterstock.com.
Wolf image used with permission from Lupas-Deva on Deviantart.com
With heartfelt thanks to our families, friends, twitter supporters and beta readers - for your encouragement, continued support and much-valued feedback.
'Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.'
C.S. Lewis
'Alas for those girls who've refused the truth, the sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth.'
Jack Zipes
PROLOGUE
It was a long walk. Damn communication failure and three taxicabs later and they were officially pretty lost. They could hear the bars, people having fun that they were supposed to be having, and tottering in that direction seemed a completely safe idea. Maybe. There was a buzz about them, all freedom and nervous laughter as they travelled the streets, winding deeper into the heart of the city on feet just starting to cramp.
‘Damn it!’ Her ankle went and her knees knocked and a hand flew to stop her inevitable smack into the road.
‘Come on! We’re almost there!!’ Her friends had no sympathy as she crouched down, slipping her foot from the heel trapped into the gridding of a manhole and tugging on the shiny, Patent-black leather, fingers wrapping the vivid red heel spike with a whine of frustration. If it broke, she’d cry, really, really cry. Hair tossed back in a huff of agitation, she glanced around nervously. Her friends were wandering off and she felt exposed, watched, hunkered down at the curb still fighting with the stubborn shoe. And the drinks back at the hotel weren’t making her paranoid as her gaze clashed with the half-hidden someone peeking out from behind the curtains of one of the houses, the corner house, all ancient. A Miss Havisham, no doubt envying her youth and beauty as she finally ripped the heel free and cooed over the undamaged leather. A flash of black by the heavy dark of the curtains, pale skin, big eyes, Miss Havisham, or Bertha Mason, whoever, they shouldn’t be so rude, watching her distress. Assholes.
‘I’m coming!!’ Wriggling back into her heels, she flashed the bright red soles in the direction of the watcher and teetered in a skipping, nervous run back into the arms of her friends.
They stumbled as a group down the streets past gawking, wolf-whistling boys and prowling men, but none of this was anything they wanted; it went by in blurs of laughter and shots that tasted of candy floss, dipping into the pubs and clubs that lined the road until they’d had their fill of drinks. It was nothing out of the ordinary, a night on the town where girls could be girls and guys could be blown off, and a few shots over the recommended limit had them hunting for more. And danger was plastered to the side of a building in a bold lit ‘FORM’, wrapped up in a crimson intricacy with some kind of two-headed Celtic squiggle, urging them to totter over the club threshold into red and black darkness.
A minute stood, embraced in the throbbing pulse of music, observing the swaying bump and grind going down on the floor. The thudding bass beat was over-toned with hypnotic trance, eerily seductive, wending them further into the crowds until they were swaying, dancing, alcohol buzzing their blood to the intoxication of thumping sound. They’d been searching for something more and they’d found it. A cave of other, amidst bars and clubs that paled in respect.
An elbow jammed into her side and she hissed, gaze narrowed in a glare at her friend, but as her head followed the excited motioning, she understood the exuberance. The man was a dish! A giant, broad, mouth-watering dish she’d love to lap at, and did so mentally. He was gorgeous in a rogue, pirate sort of way, his dark hair in dreads and longer than convention saw proper in a guy, and he was ripped to the nines with the sort of muscle you only saw in movies or Musclemania. It was instantaneous lust, with a side of paralyzing fear of rejection that no amount of encouragement from her girlfriends could dull. But she was ever the follower of her own needs, and her body was screaming the same as her friends: To get the guy at the bar deep inside her before the night was done.
Connal sat on the barstool and felt the beat vibrate up through the thick soles of his boots. An island in a sea of heaving bodies, this music set his teeth on edge. He’d been coming back here every night for the past week. Didn't mean he had to like it. He wasn't exactly hunting down his fate, but if you were a gambling man, and fuck knew he’d tossed many coins in his lifetime, the odds were that the one he sought would eventually pitch up here, in Form. Besides, he had nowhere else to go.
Elbows propped on the bar, roughened fingertips worked a circling pressure on his temples. The muscles fanning the breadth of his shoulders were tensed beneath the leather of his jacket. His eyes were trained, intent, on the rippling surface of the drink in front of him. Midleton Redbreast, mark five, all doubles. A waste of fine whiskey, but alcohol dulled his edges and the way he saw it, life was too fucking long to spend it drinking piss-water.
Connal tossed back the drink and slid the empty glass in the direction of Doyle, the bar-man. With his hair gelled back at the temples and the tight white tee, and even tighter expression, the guy was channelling James Dean, circa Rebel Without a Fucking Clue, complete with guy-liner and a pack of smokes tucked into his sleeve. Doyle paused in the middle of polishing the glass in his hand to look at the empty one pushed under his nose. ‘You're not welcome here.’
‘You're fixing to make me leave?’ Connal smiled coldly, glazed eyes fixing the guy with a challenge he knew he couldn't accept.
‘You know I can't,’ he sneered.
Connal sucked on his teeth. ‘That's right, bud. By Haven Law I'm as free to walk in here as the next son of a bitch and there's not a sodding thing you, nor I, can do about that. So how about that drink?’ He plastered a smile on his mug.
‘No law says I have to serve you.’ Doyle's jaw was clenched like he was nursing a bad dose of constipation. Christ, but the Thegn were all so uptight. It was a trademark, an affliction as distinctive as the brand they wore on their chests. Enforced celibacy was unnatural. All that pent up frustration, all those retained sexual fluids, needed a release valve, and Doyle looked ready to blow his stack.
‘Lighten up, would you, man. You'll live longer. It's just a damn drink.’ Connal slurred his words, lifting the empty glass and moving to catch the attention of the nearest bar girl, but something caught his attention first.
He smelled the female before he saw her, singled out the scent of her approach, cutting through the raft of stale sweat, smoke and beer churning out of the inadequate air-con. Like a distilled single malt, she smelled good, fresh and primed, all laced up with that delicious lick of fear that never failed to get him hard. Fresh meat. The stray thought was tamped down with a menta
l snarl. Let's try to play nice.
He took his time, taming the hunger, stroking it into submission while the waitress refilled his glass. Tilting it to his mouth, he shot the amber liquid, savouring the burn as it slid down his throat, before lifting hooded eyes from the zinc counter. His icy gaze slid sidelong down the bar, following the direction of that scent. He started from the floor and worked his way up, drinking her in, and the visual, set against the backdrop of the pulsing club lights, was up to the mark. The red-soled heels and the vertiginous hem, combined with the slight teeter in her step, gave her a coltish appearance. A long mane of brown waves skimmed the small of her back. Just the way he liked it. All the better to rein you in.
She wasn’t ‘the one’. The eyes weren’t right, but who the hell cared? He was happy to whet his appetite while he waited for his mark to show. Didn't want to wind up like that tight-ass Doyle, behind the bar now, did he?
She did have a look about her. English? Almost certainly. It was a rare local girl that would bare that much flesh to the Irish elements. These British girls blew into the city for a weekend of anonymous debauchery and drifted out again on the tide. Perfect.
A predatorial darkness came down over his eyes as he swivelled on the barstool to face her. His thighs widened to accommodate the strain of his arousal. She was nervous, a little tongue-tied, eyes darting from the floor and back up to the penetrating intensity of his stare, and he liked that too. She looked ready to bolt. Run, rabbit, run. Instead, she held her ground, wetting her lower lip and dragging the pink flesh through even, white teeth. That stirred something in him. He mirrored her mouth action, moistening his own lips with the tip of his tongue, running it along the sharp edges of his teeth. The ghost of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. ‘Don't you look fetching.’ Positively fucking edible.
Why the hell was he so juiced tonight? Sure, he'd hit on random strangers in clubs. Many, many times. He was a male with itches that wanted scratching and these ship in the night, foreign girls were easy, willing prey. Uncomplicated. He never gave his number and he never promised to call. But this? It wasn’t natural, like his anchor had been pulled and his control was drifting out, the hunger too close and getting closer. He was ravenous, the need clawing at him from the inside, demanding a release valve, pounding for an out. DeMorgan’s disappearance had left him groundless, a lightning strike, never reaching the earth. He was on the edge and humming with some intractable energy he couldn't pin down. You can pin her down. Even as he made his move, he was stuck with the grim conviction that this rendez vous wasn't going to end well, but he was horse-bolted, train-left-the-station, way beyond caring.
The exchange of words was minimal as he led her down through the dark labyrinth of corridors. The exchange of names was none. They half stumbled along carpeted passageways, papered in burgundy damask and leading off to plush, private rooms, the insistent beat of the music above growing muffled and the ceilings getting lower the deeper they wound down into the core of the club’s dark heart. The edge of nerves in the female’s breathless laughter was proof that alcohol only bolstered courage to a point. Beyond that point, you had to rely on instinct, and if hers were not clouded by the feverish lust compelling her to ride her curves up his body like a cat on a scratch-post, they should be screaming for her to run. Instead, she clung to him.
Catching the feral glint of his own reflection in the brass nameplate, his hand curled around the door handle and he tackled the girl into the darkness of Doyle’s office. The door closed behind them on a quiet snick. Without warning, he wheeled the girl around and pushed her up against the hulking partner’s desk. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, stubble scratching the nape of her neck as he growled in the shell of her ear. ‘I’m hungry. Are you hungry?’
‘Ravenous for you.’ She chuckled huskily, her ass rocked back, rolling into the grinding press of his hips with a quickly stifled moan, head dropping back, opening up the line of her throat to tickling kisses as his teeth nipped at her. God was she actually doing this? Pinned up against a fucking desk? Grinding on some guy like he could make her breathe a little better, live a little faster? She supposed she was. ‘I would so love to devour you.’ Was that her voice? Sex vixen extraordinaire, breathing words as her voice escaped her, circling her hips, her ass cushioning steel in a ride of lace covered curves.
His teeth grazed the pulse at her throat, roughened hands coasting the curve of her waist, slipping beneath the hem of that impossibly short dress and riding it up her hips to span the flat breadth of her bare stomach, guiding her back onto the hard press of his arousal. As his teeth closed around the soft flesh of her earlobe, he growled the words. ‘Hunger sharpens the senses.’
‘Yes.’ Soft pain shivered from the latch of his teeth to dwell between her clenched thighs, tightening in her lower body and slicking her skin to the silken heat of arousal. Her spine bowed from the centre span of his palm, arching up, desire snapping its jaws and gripping onto every contact in a flutter of sensation.
His tongue laved a wet, shivery stroke up the exposed column of her throat. Simultaneously, his hand cupped the lace between her thighs, a taut barrier that shaped the silken mound of her sex. A low moan escaped his tight throat.
Her teeth trapped into her lower lip, the bite of pain an anchor in the chaos he unleashed on her unsuspecting ... more than suspecting ... curves. Thighs flexed, permitting the slip of his hand between them with a ragged moan, and locked down as she danced into his palm, riding back, rough undulations that worked the softness of lace bound curves against the rigid length of his cock. Her fingers slipped down, urging on his touch into drenched panties. ‘Your plan is to kill me isn't it?’
‘I could eat you alive.’ She had no idea. The words rasped from his throat on a sound more animal than human. In the span of a heartbeat, her lace panties were sacrificed to a slice of bared claws and, thighs slammed up to the desk, a rough hand to her spine bent her forward, cheek crushed to the smooth leather. Trapped by the solid wedge of his lower body, his growl was lusty. ‘You're going to like it better this way. Trust me.’ He pinned her with his thighs, freeing his hands to manacle her wrists at the base of her spine, the ripped lace of the panties wound around their slim circumference and knotted to a firm ligature.
It startled her, the sudden jolts of pain that bruised up her trapped thighs, the hard slam quickly turning dancing grinds to a dark fever of heavy muscled power. All playfulness, all flirting culminated in this bind of desire that had her pressed into wood, its surface cool to the flush in her cheeks, its resistance unyielding, much like the man at her back. She was shivering as she burned, every shift of his body brushing the steel length of his cock to her ass, a tease, and a threat. She couldn't find the will to care that he had her trussed up in her own soaked underwear. In a twist that strained her arms, she struggled to get a fix on him, to locate and get him inside her. Barely covered curves bowed, kicking her ass up high and splitting her thighs wide to stabilise the tremble that was setting up a disco in her knees and ... brace ... 'cause, fuck she suspected she'd need it. ‘I trust you.’
She hadn’t even asked about protection, but where he was concerned, protection didn't come in little foil packets. He muttered a ragged profanity, claws scoring down polished mahogany, canines elongating as he started to move against her. Dangerously close to the edge of control, a clawed grip caged her to the desktop and sharp teeth closed around the delicious yield of her skin, anticipating the pummelling force of his thrusts that would ride her up the slickened wood. He craved the slap of flesh, pictured it lubricated by the wet sheen of sex-sweat glistening on flushed bodies.
Her heartbeat was not her own but his, drumming around the room louder than the music that thudded through the walls, a dull tempo that moved through her bloodstream in a hypnotic hum. ‘Please, God ...’ she whimpered. What the hell was she begging for? Her fingers brushed his lower stomach, blindly seeking with her fingertips, straining to touch what she could as she got wo
und up in the hard grinding buck of his hips. She had never felt anything like it. She was dancing on the edge of a razor blade, stroking hard and getting cut, and loving it. Beast and prey. The only comparison her mind could offer up. Dress hiked up, she curved in wild expectation, longing to get lost in the pounding beat of her ass to his powerful hips. She was ready to shatter, glass in the hands of this rage of male at her back, savaging desire to her skin in the razor slice of ... teeth? A bite of pain rippled through her and she dazedly spout up a vague confusion ... I don’t remember seeing dental enhancements …
He tasted blood in his mouth, laced with the sweetness of whatever cocktails had loosened her up enough to follow a stranger into the nether reaches of this dark club, to let him tie her up with her own panties and fuck her senseless. Inhaling deep, he caught the scent of her panic. Lids slammed down on a wash of crimson vision, and even as she gasped, he knew he’d fucked it up. Again.
An idiot! She was a goddamned idiot. Spooky club, insanely hot guy, X-rated Twilight movie, and she was the lead. Her climax coiled a wicked tension at her core and began to derail, so far from pulling into its station she would have whimpered at the loss, were it not for the uncertainty nipping at her ankles. A bravado was coughed up, choking giggles of faint hysteria into the air. ‘My ... what big teeth you have ... ’
CHAPTER ONE
One month previously. Nan DeMorgan sat hunched in the fireside chair, surrounded on all sides by the leaning fortress of books and loose papers that insulated her from the world outside. A thick shawl of black wool draped narrow shoulders. Her slippered feet were crossed at swollen ankles and Connal noticed how the skin of her lower legs was mottled with the reticulated purple rash that came of sitting, hour upon hour, too close to the flames of her open fire. It reminded him of the livido he’d seen on the skin of dead bodies. A living, breathing corpse, shrouded in the smell of encroaching death, she clung to the heat like it was life support. An arthritis-ravaged hand reached down to toss another sod of turf into the embers. The flames, that sparked up, danced shadows across her withered features, animating keen eyes that belied the shrivelled husk of her exterior form, eyes that lifted now to take the measure of Connal's demeanour. Her slate gray irises were ringed in white, both pupils clouded with the milky opacity of cataracts. Ancient and ageless, her flesh, it seemed, was slowly mummifying around the bird-like skeleton of her crumbling bones.
