The Hunter (23 page)

“No doubt,” she murmured, not looking up from the row of tiny, precise stitches she was building. “I realize, Mr. Argent, that I haven’t properly thanked you for saving Jakub tonight. This injury was sustained on his behalf, and for that, I don’t believe I can ever repay you.”

Argent didn’t know what she meant. She
was
going to repay him, as soon as his wound was bandaged. Indeed, as he sat there in her thrall, his arm captured in her gentle grip, he was beginning to believe that, though he’d saved her life, he was still getting the better end of the bargain.

Her body. Her pale, perfect body would bend over for him. Expose herself to him. Providing him a warm, soft sheath in which to lose himself for a while.

“Is there anything that frightens
you,
Mr. Argent?” she asked.

He gave the question due process. What did most people fear? What had he to fear that he hadn’t already experienced and survived? Starvation, torture, rape, pain, beast or man? “I can’t think of anything,” he answered honestly.

Skepticism glimmered up at him for a scant moment before she returned to her work. “Not even death?”

Only if he died before tasting her again. Only if he was denied the ecstasy he would find between her thighs before he kicked open the gates of hell to claim its throne.

“Death is inevitable. To fear it is to waste energy.”

She let out a soft sound of disbelief. “So you’re a suicidal assassin, then?”

“Not particularly. I take precautions. I don’t stay in one place for an inordinate amount of time. I don’t eat at the same establishment twice, or visit the same whore, or establish a routine whereby I could become complacent. Or ambushed.”

He could see that she fought an emotion from declaring itself through her expressive features; he wondered what it was. “That’s certainly no way to live,” she whispered.

Argent shrugged. “It’s an excellent way to not die.”

“But … but what about loss, don’t you fear that?”

“What have I to lose?”

She jerked a little harder on the current stitch than the previous ones, but he didn’t let on that he’d noticed as he watched her discomfiture grow with every passing moment of silence. “Don’t you have family?”

He shook his head. “Dead.”

“Loved ones?”

“I love no one.”

“What about this grand and beautiful house? You must have a great deal of money.”

Again, he responded in the negative. “I have more money than I could spend in three lifetimes. This is the first house I’ve ever lived in and, though I have use for some of it, I’m not essentially attached to it in any way. I’ve lived in many other places.”

When she looked up again, he saw a strange desolation in her eyes that baffled him to no end. “Where have you lived?”

He was glad they were talking … it made him less likely to slice the thread, press her against the wall, and heave into her for the two thrusts it would take for his full arousal to release its seed. He was so hard. So fucking ready.

Distraction was an excellent way to endure physical torture. Wu Ping had taught him that at a very young age, and Argent had found exceptional use for it. Besides, he enjoyed her voice.

He searched his memory for the answers to her questions. “I’d a room in Wapping for a while after I traveled with a band of pit fighters, and slept where I could. Then before that, Newgate.”

“Newgate Prison?” She gasped. “What did you do?”

“Railroad work, mostly, and fight training with a kung fu master who’d been nabbed for embezzlement.”

“No, no. I mean, what crime did you commit to get incarcerated? It couldn’t have been … you know … what you do, because they would have hanged you otherwise.”

Argent could sense her distress brimming to the surface, and wondered how much more information he should impart to her. He couldn’t comprehend the soft, bruised look in her eyes, nor the change in her voice’s pitch. She didn’t particularly like him or hold him in high esteem. He’d tried to kill her, not once, but three times. In scant moments from now, he was going to fuck her for payment.

And when he’d disposed of all who posed a danger to her and her boy, he was going to walk away from them. To return to the shadows and leave them to the light in which they lived. It had occurred to him, while sitting in Dorian Blackwell’s study and watching the man he’d often thought was almost as ruthless and unfeeling as himself adore the woman he’d claimed, that he might want a similar situation. Someone he could see every day. Someone he could fuck when he wanted. Someone else to stitch his wounds and fill the silence with something more pleasant.

But he’d been a fool to consider it, and this conversation proved it. If he had nothing to lose, he had nothing to give. And what woman would want that? He wasn’t charming unless trying to lure someone into the darkness where he could kill them. He wasn’t educated, though Dorian had taught him to read, and he did make use of the books in his library upon occasion. He wasn’t principled, scrupulous, kind, romantic, or interesting.

He didn’t feel things like others felt them, if at all. He didn’t waste his time on guilt, worry, or empathy. Up until a few days ago, he’d considered himself nothing more than a machine, a hydraulic contraption with cogs and wheels that required fuel to work, sleep to function, and whores for the release of pressure and the maintenance of equilibrium.

This woman caring for him had taught him differently, but he wasn’t convinced of an improvement. All she’d done was to uncover some kind of void he’d been hiding. Some deep, cavernous—no,
bottomless
pit of desire and unfulfillment which he had no bloody idea how to contain.

Her sex was what it called for at the moment. What it demanded.

But Argent had a feeling it wouldn’t stop until it claimed her soul. He couldn’t let that happen. This demon of insatiable emptiness was his own, and he had to do his best not to show it to her.

Best to warn her away.

“I was born in Newgate while my mother served a fifteen-year sentence for prostitution, burglary, and assaulting a nobleman. She’d been seventeen when she was arrested, and twenty-eight when she died.”

“She … died in prison?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

The void within him opened, screamed, began to swirl with awesome force and insatiable demands. It warned him. It calmed him. It gave him something to focus on.

“In a pool of her own blood.”

“No!”
The back of her hand covered her mouth, and a small bit of his blood stained the soft tips of her fingers. She reached for him, but stopped herself in time, noting the blood for herself, and examining her fingers with a somewhat horrified expression.

Bloody fuck and writhing hell
. It had begun already. Blood on her hands.

His blood. On.
Her.
Hands.

No one could spend any good amount of time in his presence before they were covered in it.

No good could come of this.

“They released me when I came of age.” He attempted the comfort angle again. “I’ve done all right for myself in the fifteen or so years since.”

She stared up at him for a long while, her dark, dark eyes swimming in pools of unshed tears. Argent found himself wondering if anyone but his mother had ever conjured tears on his behalf.

Not fucking likely.

When she blinked, they spilled over, leaving mesmerizing tracks in her makeup.

He had the ridiculous notion to lean over and kiss those tears. To lick the salt from her body and digest it, make it part of himself. To swallow her sadness so he could feel some of his own.

It was long overdue, he imagined.

The urge hardened inside of him, reminding him that if he licked that warm tear, it would only turn to shards of ice in his mouth.

“Don’t pity me,” he snapped. “No one wants to fuck a woman while she cries.”

He watched the sorrow dim and the well of emotion dry up with a sense of conflict, that he’d done something wrong, but for the right reasons.

“I suppose that’s not true, there are many men out there who enjoy your tears, who would delight in turning them to screams,” he corrected himself, the hummingbird flutter behind his breastbone freezing and plummeting to its death within the void. “You should count yourself fortunate that I am not one of them.” His gaze flicked to his wound. She’d done an excellent job. “I think you’re finished.”

With a narrow-eyed sniff she looked down. “So I have.” He thought she’d be cruel then, that she’d yank and pull and tear, if only to punish him. But she quietly and calmly snipped at the thread, tied it, and secured the bandage over her handiwork.

It was time, and she knew it as well as he did. He could see that knowledge written all over her face.

Argent stood. “There’s a basin and soap for you to wash.” He pointed.

Wash off the blood. For there was no place for it where he was taking her next.

This was one contract Argent was certain he must see through to the end.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

“If you think for
one
moment that I’m setting foot in
there,
you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

Argent glanced from the room where he slept, to Millie’s obstinate jaw and crossed arms, then back. If he wasn’t inside of her soon, he was fair certain he’d lose consciousness for lack of blood to his head. “Our agreement is such that you’re mine tonight,” he reminded her through clenched teeth. “That means however, whenever, and
wherever
I want you.” He motioned to his bed.

Argent had been watching people for a long time, and he knew with a surety he’d never before encountered the look on her face. It landed somewhere between dumbfounded outrage, and dawning horror. “I should have known.” She took a few steps back. “You
are
criminally insane. Touched. Out of your
mind
.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

Her finger jammed toward the door he held open for her. “That! That … dark closet. I wouldn’t keep an animal I liked cooped up in there. It’s barbaric. I won’t do it, I tell you.”

Scratching his head, he took a second glance. It was roughly the size of his cell at Newgate, and they’d slept two to a room. “It’s more than large enough to fit the two of us,” he pointed out. Well, horizontally anyhow. If they were to lie vertically, their feet would stick out of the door.

“I didn’t agree to
this
.” Her hand pressed against her chest as though to keep her heart inside of it. She glanced over her shoulder, three times, taking further steps backward. “You are
not
locking me in there.”

“But … it doesn’t even lock from the outside.” He closed the door and jiggled the handle, opening it again, as though demonstrating to a simple child how such a contraption operated. “See?” What was wrong with her? She stared into his chamber as though it contained medieval torture devices. Squinting into the dark room, he frowned. His bed might be nothing more than a thin mattress on the floor and a few blankets, but it certainly wasn’t the rack. Once he’d initially removed the shelves contained within, he thought it had opened up the place exponentially, though not enough for an iron maiden or anything.

He realized, a little belatedly, that he’d chosen this pantry because the rooms in his home were simply too spacious. Once your entire life had been contained in a prison cell, open spaces often seemed too exposed to sleep in.

Of course, Millie wouldn’t have such a view, would she?

“I don’t know what kind of perverted madman would bring me to a palace, and have his way with me in a pantry, but I do
not
consent. I’ll take my chances on the streets.” She took a few more steps back, and shuddered.

Argent took a step toward her. “Like hell you will—”

“Master Argent.” Welton materialized from the shadows, his face placid and droll, as always.

“
Not now,
Welton,” Argent snapped.

“But sir,” the butler insisted. “I’ve come to show your
guest
to the chambers I had made up for her.”

Millie’s wide eyes leaped from Argent to his butler and back with unmasked skepticism. “Are you both toying with me?”

Welton sniffed. “Certainly not, madam.”

“I didn’t instruct you to do that.” Argent studied Welton from narrowed eyes. The man had come with the house, and had proved handy to have nearby, once Argent had made it clear that if he ever said a thing about his comings and goings to the police, Argent would snap his neck.

Slowly.

Five years, and Argent had gotten used to having the old codger around. He never questioned his place, and was a font of information regarding the world of the
ton
and the circles in which Dorian and Argent now maneuvered.

“I am an English butler, Master Argent. It is my job to provide you and your household with whatever may be required
before
its lack is noted.” He, too, glanced into the space behind the door to which Argent clung and sniffed through one side of his prominent nose with an air of disdain. “It is not customary for a female, spouse or guest, to share the … chambers of the master, and so she is afforded her own for him to visit at his leisure.”

Millie’s other hand joined the first over her chest. “That is your … where you sleep?”

Argent remained silent, curiously loath to claim it. The way she was looking at him now, her eyes swimming again, thrummed an unpleasant chord deep in his gut. If she would pick one emotion and decide to land upon it for longer than a blink, he’d greatly appreciate it. The speed with which she swung from horror, to disdain, to sympathy had him feeling as unsteady as a toy ship in a typhoon.

He just wanted her. Now. His mouth needed to be on her again. But not like before, not frozen with fear as she’d been in her apartments. Or angry then resigned as he’d had her in the baths. He wanted her as she’d been that first time at the Sapphire Room. Hungry, willing, and bold.

If you don’t kiss me, I’ll die.