The Hunter (10 page)

So the fact that Chief Inspector Morley had informed Millie that these unrelated deaths were likely perpetrated by the same killer seemed extraordinary.

Fascinating, even.

Were the chief inspector correct, who could the killer be? Crowley? Maybe. The old bastard had been in the profession so long, why not take on five contracts in two months? His liver probably wouldn’t hold long enough for them to send him to the gallows. Dorshaw? Argent had assumed he’d retired. At least, the police had lately stopped picking organs and such off the cobblestones. Perhaps the Algerian. Or the Prussian.

Maybe someone new stalked the streets.
His
streets.

Something he’d have to discuss with Blackwell. And if other mothers of young sons were being murdered around the city, did they have something to do with the lawyer, Gerald Dashforth? Was Argent’s own contract against Millie connected? It could be a coincidence. But coincidences were rare in the underworld.
His
world. He had a few minions watching Dashforth, and the few clients of his who could afford to hire Argent. So he intended to find out.

“Millie?”

Argent’s ears pricked at hearing her name, and it wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that paid attention.

“I’m getting overheated, are you ready for lunch?”

“I’m afraid I can’t lunch today. I’m going to fetch Jakub from school after this and take him with me to the theater.”

It was her voice, Argent decided. It … did something to him. Physically. Unlike most women, her voice took on a low resonance that carried—no—enthralled. To listen to her speak was like being chained, but sweetly. One couldn’t escape the rich vibrations, but why would one desire to do so? It conjured wicked curiosity. What would her moans of pleasure sound like? Her cries of release?

“It makes me anxious being away from my son even long enough to send him to school,” she was saying. “I know I’m being overprotective.”

She wasn’t. Someone wanted her dead, and maybe the boy, too.

“I don’t blame you.” A long, lean form stood and stretched in the sunlight. The moisture blurred her lines and angles, but Argent wasn’t interested in seeing a naked woman at the moment.

At least, not the golden-haired one.

“I’ll pick up something for you and Jakub to eat at Pierre’s,” the woman named Jane offered. “I’ll put it in your dressing room.”

“Thank you, dear.” The blonde bent to receive a kiss on each cheek from Millie, who was only a dark head above the pool of water from his vantage.

At the sight of Millie and her nude friend kissing, he had to brace a hand on the wall as his body surged to life and lust flared with an entirely new level of intensity.

Jane climbed out of the bath and retrieved a wrap and towel before padding toward the hall leading to the ladies’ dressing rooms.

She passed not three spans from him and didn’t even bat an eye.

Argent waited until she was gone to creep closer to his prey. He felt like a true predator. Hungry, impatient, but aware that waiting for the precise moment to strike made all the difference in capturing his quarry.

Millie’s delicate hands gathered long and heavy ebony hair over a shoulder slick with water and oils, uncovering the flesh of her bare back to him. When she shifted to scrub suds into the slick length, Argent caught sight of the two columns of sleek, small muscle that bracketed her spine.

Blood rushed right beneath his skin in an almost tangible race to his core. Once congregated there, it made a distinct journey south.

And then she stood.

For a moment he couldn’t draw breath. He opened his mouth and took a gulp of air, and drowned in humidity and desire instead.

Never in his life had Argent known that one could be
paralyzed
by lust. Up until the moment he saw her nude form, he’d always regarded sex as a biological imperative. Something he did because his cock wanted him to. Because it afforded release, pleasure.

One by one, his fingers curled into tight fists of need.

The droplets of water sluicing down the curves of her body and into the water took on a musical lament, melancholy as the rain. What moisture clung to her seemed to do so with desperation, reflecting the thin shafts of afternoon sunlight in such a way that the illumination transformed from gleam to a sparkle.

She was a creature of the sunlight. Where the bright illumination painted so many women with a sickly pallor, she wore it like a golden cloak, a sun-kissed warmth that embossed the rich warm tones in her dark hair.

When she bent to reach for the soap on the ledge, he almost tripped.

Three days
. Argent gritted his teeth. Three days he’d prepared for this. He was a man of ultimate patience and discipline. He wasn’t brave, he was fearless. His will wasn’t strong, it was iron. He’d been burned, whipped, stabbed, and beaten without so much as a moan of pain.

So why did the sight of Millie LeCour’s glorious ass have him swallowing a whimper?

She sank back down just before his knees gave out.

Her ebony head disappeared beneath the water to rinse her hair, and Argent seized the moment. If he’d made any sound, the fact that her head was submerged would smother it.

But he didn’t.

This couldn’t go on. He had to end it. Now. Sweet or no, chains were chains, and Argent had long since promised he would
never
be imprisoned again. Not even by the velvet ropes of Millie LeCour.

The water barely made a ripple as he lowered himself into the bath, reached down, and pulled her naked, glistening body up from beneath the surface.

She came up fighting.

Gasping for breath, she made a wild swipe at his face. The force of it, combined with the water, actually stung.

Argent barely stopped himself from bending her over and taking her against the edge of the pool. He was hard as a diamond.

Turning her, he subdued her easily, shackling one arm around her middle, chaining her arms to her sides. This time, instead of wrapping his arm around her neck, he clamped his hand over her mouth.

He could drown her. It would only be fair. For, though he had her in his clutches, he was the one being pulled under. Her skin, made slippery by water and soap, created a delicious friction even through the layers of his wet clothing.

Her bare bottom rubbed against the hard sex straining behind his wet trousers, letting it rest in the cleft between the two supple curves.

They froze. Both unsure of what he would do next.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Through her panic, Millie recognized the solid body pressed against her naked back. She’d been in quite this same position before.

Except then she hadn’t been aware of the true danger. This was no obsessed admirer. His hold was firm but painless. The hand cupped over her mouth bowed as though to spare her lips the pain of being ground against her teeth.

Though the sex pressed against her posterior caused tremors of terror violent enough to ripple the water.

“I made a promise to Mr. McGivney that I wouldn’t make you scream,” he rumbled against her ear. His breath was hot against the wet, sensitive skin of her neck, but his tone was flat and cold as the Thames. “If you make a liar out of me, you’ll regret it. Do we have an understanding?”

Millie swallowed a sob of terror, seeking composure. Panic served no purpose. She had to keep her wits about her.

She nodded and he released her mouth. When she licked her lips, she instantly regretted it. They tasted of salt and flesh that was not her own. A flavor she did not find repugnant.

And damned if it didn’t make her nipples tighten.

“What do you want with me? What have you done to Mr. McGivney?” she whispered, disgusted with her body’s reaction to his nearness.

Then another thought lanced through her, followed by a flash of hot rage. “If you’ve hurt Jakub, I’m going to—”

“I have not gone near your son, but he
is
in danger.”

Millie’s gasp brought her breasts closer to the arm encircling her waist like a steel vise. “Is that a threat?” she hissed.

“It’s a fact.”

Her throat clogged with alarm. “Don’t do this,” she rasped. Her fear evaporated, changing into equal parts determination and desperation. Her survival meant nothing in the face of Jakub’s safety. “I’ll do anything you want.”

He was quiet a long time, and still as the dead, but for the steady pulse of his manhood against the cleft of her ass.

“Anything?”
he finally breathed against her ear.

The full weight of her offer hit her between the eyes with enough force to make her knees weak. “Who are you?” she demanded with a bravado she didn’t come close to feeling. “I know the name Bentley Drummle was a cover.”

“We all have our characters we play,” he said cryptically, his hand falling to her shoulder and pressing her closer against him. “But be assured, your son was never in danger from me. I don’t kill children. My name is Christopher Argent. I have been employed by the solicitor Gerald Dashforth to assassinate you.”

Millie could scarcely believe it. He sounded like a gentleman making introductions in the parlor. He may as well have said, “Hello, I’m Lord So-and-So, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Are you a murderer or a mercenary?” she asked, calling upon all her skills to keep her voice modulated, so as not to excite him to violence.

“Both. Either.”

All right. That revealed nothing. “You say this man, this Gerald Dashforth, he’s paying you to kill me?”

“Yes.”

Cold. His voice was so cold she shivered.

“I’m a woman of means, Mr. Argent. I can pay you double the price of the contract for my life.” There, that didn’t sound so desperate. She could be like him. Businesslike, terse, logical.

“That would be … unprecedented.” He paused. “It couldn’t be known that I would turn coat for a rate increase. Then every one of my marks would barter for their lives thusly. They’d have seen my face. They’d know who I work for. It’s an excellent way to get caught.”

As hope died, fury took its place. For a reason beyond her, his tone, more than the words, sent her temper rushing to her head with such force her ears burned and her mouth opened. If he was going to kill her, he’d get a piece of her mind first. “You. Are.
Insane
,” she gritted through her clenched jaw.

He paused again, and she had the distinct feeling she’d bemused him. “What?”

“You heard me.” Heedless of her nudity, she began to squirm in that limp, boneless way Jakub had done as a toddler when he’d wanted to escape her clutches. “Lying your way into my after party, using that ridiculous Dickensian name. Risking your life to sneak into my apartments in the middle of the freezing night. To what purpose? To toy with me, terrorize me? To
kiss
me? And then here you are
again,
in the middle of the blasted city, broad daylight even, in my
bath
with your bloody
shirt and trousers
still on, telling me you don’t
kill
children. That you don’t break a contract for the sake of your—industry reputation. I tell you, you’re mad. A
lunatic
.”

“You would rather I were naked?”

“
No!
God! That’s not—I just—” Her struggles were getting her nowhere except closer to that intimidating arousal behind his wet trousers. “Turn me around, blast you! I at least deserve to look my murderer in the eyes.”

To her complete shock, he complied.

But he didn’t meet her eyes. As he held her at arm’s length, his gaze touched her everywhere else but. The column of her neck, her breasts, the planes and hollows of her stomach, the nest of curls between her thighs.

Millie remembered what he looked like, but hadn’t been thoroughly prepared to see him again. Not like this. Standing as they were, in shafts of brilliant sunlight, his appearance was more evocative of an archangel than a murderer-for-hire, and the paradox again took her breath away.

There was no denying that he was beautiful. Beautiful in that way that a lightning storm was beautiful, or a tidal wave. Awe-inspiring and utterly dangerous. Standing in front of him like this was akin to unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a wolf or a bear in the wild. Terrifying, and yet one had the indefinable understanding that this predator was a rare and exquisite creature. Every muscle, every sinew carefully crafted for hunting.

For killing.

The sun ignited embers of gold in his auburn hair. The water turned his white shirt iridescent, molded as it was to a body better suited to a barbarian than—well—a suit. The swells of his chest and the thickness of his arms killed any thoughts of escape, but awakened something else, altogether. Something primal and distressing. This was a man who would defeat all other men. One who, in some other time, would have fought legions and laid siege to tyrants.

Or might have been one.

There is no fighting him, she thought with a terrible acceptance. No escape. No denying the absolute power in those muscular arms. She could sense it in the rough hands gripping her shoulders.

He continued to watch her. Inspect her was more like it, with those pale, remote eyes. If Millie had felt naked before, now she was positively
exposed
.

And just like a lightning storm, just like that heart-stopping moment before a wild animal tore out one’s throat, the dreadful anticipation tightened her nerves until they snapped.

“Do it,”
she dared. “What are you waiting for?”

He struck without warning, but not with a lethal blow.

Instead, his mouth surged against hers.

Too shocked to resist, Millie gasped involuntarily, which parted her lips for the invasion of his tongue.

The kiss was brutal. Or, at least, Millie was certain he’d meant it to be. But for a man with such a stern mouth, his lips were surprisingly full against hers. Stunned and defenseless, Millie was unable to move, to deny her body’s unwanted reaction to the intimate flavor of him.

He locked her against his body, consuming her with unrepentant hunger. The bristle of his jaw abraded her skin as he explored her mouth with strong sweeps of his tongue. Millie became suddenly aware of how wet and slick everything was. Her skin, his tongue, her sex, the hand he moved to the nape of her neck to press her closer. To plunge deeper.