The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) by Jess Raven, Paula Black Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
     
     
     

CHAPTER NINE

     
     
    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