Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Black, Paula

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do they go vampiric? One of them, she bit the man she was with.’ Wolf, he’s not a hu-MAN, Ash...

  ‘They don’t drink blood, no. It’s a way to encourage the male to bite, taps into the primal instinct.’

  A cheeky part of her brain filed that away for future consideration while the other heaved its mental bulk on the side of ... ‘Shit.’ Ash dropped her head into her hands, curling her fingers into her hair and tugging at the roots as she let her mental stomach digest. ‘Soooo ... you don’t eat people, or drink blood. What do you need?’

  ‘Right now?’ He offered her a wry grin. ‘I could murder a plate of steak and eggs.’

  ‘That’s all?! Well, damn, I can do that!!’ She pulled at his arm again, shivering as skin touched skin and her heart thumped in her chest. Still, she reacted to him. ‘Get up, Big Bad, I cook a mean steak and eggs.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It took a lot of groaning and creaking muscles for them to maneuver into the small set-away kitchen area. Took even more to get him seated and stable in the hard-backed dining chair, his face flushed and clammy, impossibly pale under the blush of pained exertion.

  ‘Steak and eggs, do you have steak? Aha!’ Rifling through the compact, protein heavy fridge, she came up with a film-wrapped plate of two thick meat slabs and a carton of eggs, nabbed some butter for the pan and the salt mill from the countertop and she was good to go. ‘Do you want it rare? Eggs well done, scrambled, sunny side up?’ Ash shot off questions as she moved, animated into helping him, eager to do something other than think anymore about whether or not he wanted to bite her ... and whether she wanted to be bitten. The thought boomeranged around her head, hitting off fantasies and darting around the corners of her sense, avoiding her terror. It wouldn’t leave her alone. It wanted to be acknowledged and she beat it back by prepping the steak with vicious shakes of salt and heapings of butter, sizzling in the bottom of the pan.

  ‘Rare and scrambled.’ He grunted his words in edgeways and she leapt to ... the word wasn’t obey. It was more ... accommodate. Care. It made him nervous.

  When she stopped moving long enough to get a good look at him, he was watching her with the strangest expression on his face, the fever gone from his gaze, the colour in his skin trickling down his side and ... splattering on the floor like bloody Chinese water torture. Drop, drop, drop.

  ‘Oh my gods, Connal! You are dripping all over the floor! Did you pull something? Hold this there and give me two seconds.’ She pressed a red plaid dishcloth into his hands and was away before she could check if he actually obeyed her, figuring out the way back through the drapes and stepping into the correct section. Bath. Her beast needed a bath and she could handle no more blood today. No more blood for at least a month, please.

  She spun the taps over the copper bath, dipped her hand under to test the temperature and let it fill. No soaps that would sting, just hot, clean water filling the tub. The scent of cooking meat sizzled into the air and filled the cool of the cellar expanse with the delicious aroma of salty beef and Ash trailed it back through the drapes to check the pans.

  She felt like the Flash on acid, constantly moving, making herself necessary, because if he asked her to leave again, she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t explode into a bawling mess. And he’d certainly kick her out then.

  Ash pulled the thick slabs from the pan, scored the meaty flesh with a knife searched out from a drawer and declared them rare enough for any beast to eat, plonking them unceremoniously on a clean black plate and heaping a tumble of messy scrambled eggs into a bowl, her offerings pushed across the table to still in front of him.

  ‘I’ll trade you steak for answers, Big Bad,’ Ash handed over a knife and fork, dropping herself into the opposite chair with a tired sigh, huffing a stray curl from her eyes, watching, waiting for that first bite that would seal their agreement.

  ‘Where’s your plate?’ Her shoulder lifted in a lazy half shrug but she didn’t rise to get herself one. ‘When did you last eat Ash?’ Sapphire eyes rolled to the ceiling as though trying to remember, fingers flicking as she counted off the times she hadn’t.

  She didn’t know. It had to have been a few days, the hours snowballing into one another with fear and pain, stalkers and doctors and body burying and sex ... and right back into fear and pain. A cycle such as that didn’t leave time for food. ‘The pub, I think ... maybe.’ It was an absent answer and Ash nudged his plate closer, trying to coax him to eat with the scents swirling from the stacked meat. ‘Connal, please eat.’ I need you strong, I need you not dying. Because you’re scaring me.

  He lifted the fork and pointed the tines in her direction. ‘I eat when you eat.’

  ‘I’m not hung ... ry.’ Her stomach chose that moment to thunder its disagreement, it was definitely hungry, a sleeping beast poked to growling by the spearing scent of salty meat and fresh velvety eggs. It chewed on her insides.

  ‘Steak for answers, Ashling.’ And his voice brokered no argument, strong fingers spooning heapings of eggs onto the plate and forking one of the steaks into the bowl.

  Steak and eggs for two.

  Ash scooped up a second set of cutlery with a resigned huff, glaring at him with no real heat, a pointed dip of her lashes and quirk of her brow prodding him silently to eat.

  The first forkful of eggs that passed her lips was Connal's cue to dig in. Goddamn, but he was ravenous. The bottomless growling pit of his stomach clawed at him to inhale the entire plate down in one. Stifling a moan around the first tender mouthful, he forced himself to chew and savour the taste of what she had made for him. ‘So good,’ he groaned, and when his eyes lifted from the plate to watch her eat, Ash’s answering smile was food to his soul. Carving through the meat with rapid efficiency, he paused, fork mid-air and caught her eye. ‘Thank you,’ his words were quiet, sincere, ‘for everything.’

  Deer in the headlights startled, Ash couldn’t even blink as he caught her gaze and uttered words so low and, God forbid she say it, heartfelt, she thought she was maybe dreaming it. But no, he was waiting for something and her head dipped, hair falling to curtain the pleased blush rising in her cheeks, a flustered mumble tripping off her tongue. ‘Ummm, no problem, Big Bad ... a pleasure.’

  It was a few bites into the companionable silence that lapsed before Ash swallowed and let loose with something that had been worrying the back of her mind since their conversation in the forest. ‘I have their eyes.’ Random to anyone outside of her head, but he looked so human sitting there. But they looked human too, the men in the club. Except for their eyes. Something she shared. She shuffled some eggs around, flopping them into a small pile and stabbing at them as she spoke, gaze down. ‘What am I, Connal?’

  He balanced the knife and fork on the edge of the plate and straightened up in the chair. ‘Truth? I don’t know.’

  That was not promising, not helpful at all. ‘Am I like you ... them?’

  His expression darkened. ‘They believe you are, but they’ve been wrong before, and when they get it wrong, people die.’

  ‘And you? What do you believe?’ Her fork screeched on the plate as she speared a chunk of steak a little too forcefully, anxious. He hated the wolves, killed his own race. Would he do the same to her if she was like him?

  Leaning back on the legs of the chair, Connal scrubbed a hand over the nape of his neck, considering his next words. He had promised her full disclosure, and she deserved nothing less. ‘I believe what I can see with my own eyes, what I can touch, and feel. You are different.’ He examined his hands before lifting his gaze to deliver the confession. ‘I’ve been drawn to you from the moment I caught your scent on that red coat. It’s the same reason they are drawn to you, the wolves and the Thralls.’

  A frown crinkled her brow, mourning the bright red of her damaged-beyond-repair coat as she chewed over his past words with a bite of steak. ‘I’m bait.’

  He shook his head, mirroring her frown. ‘Not bait. Biology
. The full moon. You felt that, didn’t you? The quickening, the energy, the appetites. The pull is in your blood, Ash. You feel it too, you can’t deny it.’

  There would be no denial. Ash felt her cheeks infuse in a flush redder than the blood on the floor, heating at the memory of him, her, them. The feel of the ice melting and her inhibitions lowering. The pull. ‘So that was why we ...’

  ‘Some instincts are too strong to be denied.’ He was fighting some pretty powerful instincts right now. The blush staining her cheeks left him widening his thighs to accommodate the ache between his legs. He was grateful for the table. The towel slung hastily about his hips when she dragged him to the kitchen left little to the imagination.

  ‘I’m an animal?’ Indignation lit her tone into a growl, knife and fork clattering to the swiftly emptying platter of food. Every little part of her wanted to deny the implications, but given what happened, she hadn’t exactly been civilised.

  The front legs of the chair snapped back down to the floor. ‘We are all animals, Ash. I can’t tell you what you are. I can only tell you that these wolves are desperate enough to rip you apart trying to find out.’

  Just as they did my mother. ‘What makes me so damn special?’

  ‘It's genetics. They target Latents: females who they believe can carry their bloodlines.’

  ‘Bloodlines? You mean, like, breeding?!’ Ashling DeMorgan. Graduate, orphan, broodmare for hell wolves.

  ‘I mean exactly like breeding.’

  There could be no measure for the volume of weirded out she was currently drowning in. But her nightmares made a lot more sense. The way they descended on her mother had always been slightly confusing for her younger mind to process. They had been ravaging and ravenous. Now, she could add the word carnal to it. ‘Why? What do they want with me?’

  ‘They are a species on the verge of extinction. They have no females to carry their young, and so they are recklessly hunting down any woman with the merest hint of wolf blood in the desperate hope of propagating their race. And you are their latest target.’

  ‘Lucky me ...’ The frown was becoming perma-etched onto her face. Everyone wanted her to have their wolf spawn? She could maybe deal with that, be flattered even, but the end result would probably make her look worse than Connal in the process. ‘You said my grandmother sent you to protect me. She knows?’

  ‘How do you know that she’s even your real grandmother?’

  ‘What do you mean? She’s the only one I have.’

  ‘I mean you’re not the first.’

  Confusion darkened her eyes, the last forkful of eggs abandoned on the plate, imploring him to enlighten her.

  ‘You’re not the first girl that Anann DeMorgan has assigned me to protect.’

  Well didn’t that make her feel all special. ‘The other girls. What happened to them?’

  ‘Some were taken, the rest, Anann hid them, offered them refuge. But ...’

  ‘But now she’s in no state to do anything.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Connal’s elbows hit the table and his head slumped into his hands on a frustrated exhale. ‘I can’t fight them all.’

  YOU’RE SCREWED got stamped across her forehead in a blaze of panic. She would not be prey to them, never would they traumatise her world like they did her dreams. She would never stop running if that’s what it took. And fighting, if she had to, she would arm herself tooth and nail in any way possible.

  ‘I refuse to just lay down and die ... or spread my legs for a monster horde.’ Nails raked at her insides, her skin shrinking and shrivelling in a tight chill of abhorrence. ‘I want these murderers and rapists brought to justice.’

  ‘You’re just a little lost girl, Ash. I can’t protect you. There is no justice.’

  ‘Revenge then.’ If he knew just how personal her vendetta was, Ash didn’t think he’d be spouting about ‘no justice’. She could literally feel the blood gathering on her hands, the violent urges swarming up to fill her with sharp-fanged thoughts and clawing animosity.

  ‘Revenge will take you to dark places.’

  ‘You say that like a man who’s been to those places,’ she countered.

  She spoke the truth, but they were places Connal really didn't want to go with Ash. The conversation had taken a turn down a dark alley of his past, and they fell to eating in silence. When his plate was clean, he busied himself with clearing away the dishes and was grateful when she steered them back to neutral ground, marvelling at how rapidly his injuries seemed to be healing. Even with his back to her, he could feel the weight of her eyes on him while he worked at the sink. Whether she observed him with a purely clinical concern or something more he could not discern. Regardless, her attention raked heat over his skin. He had been about to turn and seek the truth in her gaze when she remembered leaving the bath taps running.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Tightening the towel slung low on his hips, his eyes now appreciated the arch of her spine and the feminine flare of her hips as she hunkered down over the ancient copper bath, cranking the taps closed and fussing over the water. With a full stomach and a bone-deep fatigue weighing him down, she had led him here, like a wounded puppy on a leash, and he shuffled along, willing, eager to divert the lines of her earlier enquiry. She flipped the heavy fall of her raven hair over one shoulder as she worked, exposing the line of her throat to him once more, awakening unsated hungers that had him wetting dry lips. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Ash.’

  Her bones creaked as she straightened, a million years old from sleeping half on a concrete floor and at an odd angle draped over a giant wolf, her eyes skimming up to meet his with a smile edged in laughing confusion. ‘What was the question again?’ Distracted. She’d been so distracted by miles of half naked, crazy gorgeous male that any vocal input was being lost in a tangle of hot thoughts and melting nerves.

  She drew up eye level to the wolf brand and the metal piercings in his flesh, the top of her head barely reaching his pecs. Staring up at him from beneath dark lashes, barefoot in that very feminine, curve-skimming dress, her intelligent eyes were bright as sapphires. So strong, this woman was, and yet so petite. He may have dwarfed her frame with his muscle bulk, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in courage. Little girl lost? He couldn’t have been farther from the truth. This girl had the heart of a lion beating in her chest. He swallowed hard, but the words still came out with a growled quality. ‘In the forest ... the pull. You felt it?’

  ‘I ... may have felt something.’ Mainly she’d been feeling him, and it set fires under her skin, flaring pink to her cheeks to remember it.

  He reached up to stroke his thumb along the delicate bone structure of her jaw. She didn’t recoil from him. She stood her ground in the heat of his dark gaze. ‘What about now, Ash? Do you still feel it?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure at this point that you’re magnetic.’ And she had the North to his South, or something equally bizarre. He jumbled her head, fried her circuits with that single, tentative touch, and she inclined her jaw, rubbing against the callused pad of his thumb, inviting more as her tongue stole out to wet her lips and answer something with a little more sense and less mental lusting. ‘Yes, I feel it.’

  His voice dropped an octave. ‘Because this is just us, Ash. Just you and me, naked and broken. No full moon fever, no supernatural mojo-’ his hand moved under her jaw, tunneling into the silken hair at the nape of her neck ‘-and I am so drawn to you, I want you so fucking much, I am raw with hunger.’ The final words came out on a rasp, his lips a breath from hers, an unspoken request for permission.

  Damn it all to hell, but she wanted him too. She wanted him naked and not so broken, she wanted to run her hands over every inch of him and not have him wince. They were so close, her fingertips were featherlight against his hips, curling not to touch and begging her to let them, her lips sharing the breath from his as she rested into his hold. Strong, he was so strong, so warm, he radiated need. ‘Connal ...’ There was no guar
antee she wasn’t under some sort of Adonis-male supernatural mojo, but hell, if it got her closer to him, she’d take whole doses of it. Her fingers strayed to the loose edge of the towel, where smooth skin met fluffy material and her lips danced a little nearer, body swaying. Yes, she was drawn. There were invisible strings tugging between them and with every breath she was convincing herself to touch him some more. A whimper escaped, her internal war taking too long for her burning body. Ash dropped back on her heels, rocking slightly as she clamped the edge of the tub for support, ‘I promised you a bath, and it’s getting cold.’

  His hand dropped from her hair on a ragged exhale, lids shutting down the desire that burned in his eyes. ‘The bath ... right. Thank you.’ He nodded, and taking a step back from her, his hands reached to untie the towel at his hips, letting it fall to the ground on a whisper. He had bared his soul. His nakedness, his obvious arousal, just didn’t seem relevant in the grand scheme of things. Stepping into the bath, he lowered his aching body down into the water, letting its comforting heat envelope bruised limbs. Hands gripping the edges, he eased himself back against the support of the high walls and his head fell back on a quiet exhale. ‘I can take it from here.’

  Double fuck. He drifted from her fingers with a quiet acceptance that hurt her heart. He’d pulled the curtains on the fire he’d been feeling and left her with a chill. The Ice Maiden strikes again. God, she was an idiot! Instinct had said kiss and she should have pounced him so hard the back of his head would have felt her lips. Should have taken them both down to the tile floor, the bath be damned. But he was hurt, and her insides niggled with concern that clouded her desire. Turned her into an idiot. So she was stuck with him retreating again and everything within her begging her to follow. Ash folded into herself, her arms wrapping her waist, lashes low, watching through the inky fan as he slowly removed the towel she silently envied. The fabric fell away and any breath she may have drawn was stolen by the sight. He was ... male. Incredibly, magnificently male. And yeah, she’d felt him, she’d had him over her, and under her, and inside her, but she’d never seen him.