The Hunter (43 page)

The assassin paused at the threshold, but didn’t look back. “If there’s blood on the streets, you have no one to blame but yourselves.” With that, he disappeared down the dark hallway.

Morley turned to Dorian. “Blackwell, if you could talk to him. Make him understand that I’m trying to change all that. To ensure the future is not like the past.”

“Don’t look to me.” Dorian shrugged. “I’m not in control of his decisions.”

“Who is?” Morley asked.

Dorian squinted into the shadows of his own home; noting that Argent hadn’t left as he was wont to do, but gone upstairs toward the guest rooms. “That’s an excellent question, Inspector. One that remains to be seen.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
EIGHT

Millie was exhausted. Though, it seemed, she couldn’t bring herself to snuff the lantern and lie back. Full of alternate scenarios and unanswered questions, her mind seemed to eschew the darkness. Too many monsters lurked there.

Too many memories.

Perched on the edge of a lovely and comfortable guest bed, she stared at the budding bruises on her wrists left by iron manacles, and let the peaches-and-cream bedroom blur into her periphery. Swathed in a borrowed white nightgown, bathed, brushed, and braided, she remained motionless for countless minutes.

Jakub was safe. She was
alive
. The danger was vanquished. So, why did she feel more insecure than ever? What was this strange lump of fear stuck at the back of her throat?

Why did the thought of going back to her charmed and happy life make her so melancholy?

She knew he was there before he made a noise. Perhaps she’d been waiting for him. Because the moment Christopher Argent stepped into the bedroom, all questions were answered. All the anxiety dissipated. And the darkness seemed like a safer place. Because he was part of it, and it was an eternal part of him.

He looked hard and savage. Angry. His face was stone, but not the cold, grim set she’d come to know. Even though he wasn’t looking right at her, she read everything she needed to in his features. This wasn’t the man who only a half hour past had sung a gentle lullaby to her son. This was a different beast. Perhaps one she hadn’t met before.

Millie wasn’t used to heat from this man, let alone the conflagration she sensed from him. Heat and possession and something deeper, more permanent, radiated from his large body.

An answering warmth flared beneath her own skin, and she yearned to meld it with his, lest she be scalded by need.

“You’re …
alive
.” His chest heaved and he had the strangest look in his eyes, as if he’d come upstairs expecting her to be gone, or worse. “I mean—” He cleared his throat. “You’re beautiful. That is … you look … better.”

He was acting strange. Well, more strange than usual. And he had been since the catacombs. Though he’d shut her door behind him, he hadn’t yet taken his hand off the latch. Millie had a feeling that if she made a move toward him, he’d bolt.

“Come in,” she invited, patting the space on the bed beside her. “I haven’t had a moment to properly thank you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Nonsense,” she cajoled. “Come here.”

He shook his head, stepping backward. “I’m not myself.” His eyes were bright, his movements jerky and wild instead of graceful as usual. “But I had to see you.” He gave her his broad back, as he turned the latch to leave.

“Don’t go.” She reached a hand out.

“I should never have come, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Millie challenged.

He glanced over his shoulder. “You should be.”

“I know.” Standing, she began to unbutton her nightdress, pushing it off her shoulders and letting it glide down the contours of her body. She was unclothed, but it was he who stood naked in front of her.

“I’m alive, thanks to you. I want to
feel
alive.” It was all she needed to say.

A palpable shift occurred as he visibly broke whatever chain it was that kept him away from her. Some would call it decency. Others would call it fear. Millie knew it was some complicated mélange of the two.

In the end, need won the night.

He pushed away from the door and his long, powerful legs ate up the paces between them. He’d reclaimed his predatory grace, no longer held in check.

A thrill stole Millie’s breath the moment before he reached her, yanked her into his arms, and kissed her harshly.

The lethal potency in him hit her with a palpable wave. Millie could sense it, coiled and deadly, balancing on a dagger’s edge. The lust generated by such a dangerous man, unleashed upon her with a fury she’d never before felt from him, was indescribably erotic. His tongue was a smooth invader, claiming her mouth, forcing her teeth apart, and sweeping over hers with sure, rhythmic thrusts. His stubble was rough against her lips, cheeks, and chin.

His hands were rougher.

Roaming everywhere at once, his palms abraded her skin with incomparable sensation. Once they reached the curve of her backside, he ground her against him. The rigid length behind his trousers was hard as stone. She could feel the heat of it pulsing from where it was wedged between their bodies.

She had never wanted anything more, had never been so needy and aching. She craved his weight above her. His body inside hers.

Feeling brazen, she reached between them and cupped his erection. He gasped and tore his mouth from her. His lips gleamed with moisture, and his eyes glinted down at her with an erotic warning. Her name ripped from his throat on a low groan.

“I want to be beneath you.” She released him, reaching up to undo the buttons of his shirt, exposing shoulders as tight as cables.

“I shouldn’t—”

“Don’t deny me,” she commanded gently, pressing a kiss to the glossy web of scars at his shoulder as she pushed his shirt down. “Don’t tell me not to be kind. I
must
be kind to you, and you must allow it.”

He twitched and stiffened when she kissed his shoulder, the skin of his throat, but his arms remained locked around her. After a few indecisive moments, his head dropped to where the column of her neck met her own shoulder and he pressed a kiss there, too.

Millie’s heart melted, and so did her loins, becoming soft and wet and ready for him.

His second kiss was more tender, velvety, but just as possessive and urgent as before. It entranced Millie so completely, she hardly marked the sounds of his shirt hitting the floor, or his trousers. He kicked them and his shoes away before pushing her back onto the bed, his strong arms anchored at her back to cushion her fall.

Slowly, rigidly, he settled on top of her, breathing out something harsh and profane against her ear. She could feel his cock as he stretched atop her, hard and insistent against her thigh.

His mouth found hers, questing for consolation. She gave it to him, smoothing her hands down the cords of his back, threading her fingers through his silken hair. She’d expected this moment between them to be explosive and lusty. A frantic, thrusting culmination of a horrific night.

What she hadn’t anticipated, was this need to explore the nuances of their desires. She’d never been able to truly look at him when they’d come together in the past. Hadn’t thrilled to the way his eyes turned from ice to indigo when he was aroused.

His rough thumbs grazed her nipples, teasing them into hard peaks, causing her to grind against him.

“Soft,” he groaned, as though having lost the ability to create full sentences. As he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, his hands drifted down, spanning the indent of her waist, flaring over the curve of her hip.

Millie moaned her encouragement, reveling in the feel of his sleek muscles beneath her palms, in the weight of his incredible body pressing her into the mattress.

His teeth caught at her captured lip as his fingers cleaved the moist cleft between her thighs. A hoarse cry exploded from her as he grazed the small nub of flesh from which raw pleasure seemed to spiral to the farthest reaches of her limbs.

She gasped his name, a climax rolling up from deep within her after only a few soft strokes of his hand. Clutching at him, clenching her thighs together, she rode it, spun out with it. Only vaguely was she aware of the wild sound he made as he explored the tender parts of her throat with his lips and teeth.

She writhed beneath him until her limbs locked with a few last jaw-clenching pulses and then she went limp, resting her forehead on his scarred shoulder as she struggled to regain her breath. Christopher pressed kisses into her hairline and dragged his lips along her jaw. He wound his hand in her hair, anchoring her head back as he studied her lips, then captured them, marking her tender skin with his stubble before pulling away to inspect his handiwork.

She could feel the urgency rising within him. His knee wedged between her legs and spread her wide beneath him.

Millie put a staying hand on his chest and he froze. His eyes closing, as though he knew it was over.

“Look at me,” she ordered, reaching up to cup his face.

He flinched, turning his head and clenching his jaw, staring into the dark fireplace past the foot of the bed. His muscles instantly went from molten to cold steel, and his hand tightened in her hair.

Millie was afraid to lose him, but in this moment she knew she had to forge ahead. “I see you, Christopher Argent. I know who you are,” she soothed, running her hands over his powerful naked back and up the swells of his biceps. “I want you to see me. I want you to know me.”

Exerting gentle pressure, she pulled his obstinate features around to face her, and his gaze hovered right below hers.

“I want you to feel this, not just with your flesh. But here.” She touched his chest and felt the kick of his racing heart. She kissed him gently and then settled her head back against his palm. “
Look
at
me,
” she commanded again.

Millie thought she was prepared for what would be in his eyes when he obeyed. How wrong she’d been. In her defense, she didn’t believe anyone would be capable of holding the intensity of his gaze for very long.

But she didn’t dare look away, lest he read it as a rejection.

Words didn’t exist to describe what she saw in the depths of his eyes.
Possession
wasn’t strong enough.
Desire
didn’t cover the half of it.
Vulnerability
couldn’t touch the silent, searing profundity of it.

Millie almost regretted what she’d done, for in that moment she realized she might have unleashed something from a place wilder and more wounded than she’d originally thought. Perhaps Christopher Argent didn’t need redemption. It was deeper than that, infinitely more complicated. Millie had a suspicion that what he needed was deliverance. Release. For though he’d been out of prison for some time, a part of him was still locked away there, in the past.

More than she’d desired anything in her life, Millie wanted to be the one to set him free. And this was the perfect place to start. “This isn’t fucking,” she whispered, running her thumb tenderly along his cheekbone. “Not this time.”

His nostrils flared, but he nodded, his unflinching gaze holding on to hers as though it were a lifeline. “Not this time,” he agreed tightly.

His possession was unbelievably slow as he sank inside of her, filling her with a heat she’d not known existed. For a moment they stayed like that as his cock stretched her slick channel and throbbed inside her welcoming body. They both stared, stunned by the incomprehensible intensity of the moment. It was like a thousand bolts of lightning converged within them, between them, and they somehow had joined more than just their bodies.

But fused their souls, as well.

“What have you done to me?” he lamented as he took her again, this thrust stronger, gaining a rhythm that set them both to gasping.

Millie met his every stroke with an encouraging lift of her hips as he surged deeper inside of her with each thrust.

He caressed her tenderly, her breasts, her shoulders, her throat, his fingers curling around the soft, delicate column in a gentle imitation of strangulation.

Millie lifted her chin to receive his descending lips, demonstrating her trust, daring him to trust her back.

It didn’t take long for her pleasure to build. She fought it, wanting to stay here in this moment. Wanting to watch him as he watched her. But, it seemed, the more she strained against it, the stronger it became, until it broke upon her like the waves against sea cliffs in a tempest. The violence of it was shocking, so much so that his pleased growl was lost in her blissful cries.

Christopher gave her no quarter, the tempo of his hips changed from tender to urgent, then fierce, full of unrestrained power, grinding into her and ripping another climax from her before the first one was quite finished.

She held on to him as he rode her, as the last pulses of delight turned into drugging satiation. He was a wild, primitive beast, his muscles bunching and cording beneath his skin. His head buried in her hair as he made guttural noises with each of his merciless thrusts.

The lantern cast erotic shadows on the ceiling, and Millie watched them with a soft glow filtering through her entire body.

As he flung his head back and buried himself deep inside of her, shouting and straining with the force of his release, Millie wanted to weep. In fact, tears pricked behind her eyes and she blinked them away.

She’d found that word for what had burned down at her from his eyes. She
knew
what was happening between them. Understood why they weren’t just fucking.

They both knew it.

This time, they were making love.

*   *   *

Untold minutes passed in blissful silence as they lay next to each other in the golden lantern light. Millie listened to Christopher’s breathing regulate, almost as though he commanded it to do so. She wished she were inside his head. That she were privy to the thoughts of a man such as him. He was an enigma, really. A hard man to understand and an even harder one to read. Those small moments of insight she had into his broken psyche only made her want to dig deeper, to burrow in like a mite until there was no way he could be rid of her.