The Hunter (24 page)

He hadn’t truly understood what she’d meant at the moment she’d said it. Though the longer he was denied her mouth, the more the words made sense.

“Right this way, madam, if you please.” Welton gestured down the long hallway with a stiff bow and marched toward a large, arched door at the end.

Blinking away a rather dazed expression, she cast a very different sort of look at the neat pallet on the floor before sweeping past it to follow in his butler’s wake.

Once they’d entered the chamber, Argent made the first personal conclusion about his butler in five years. Welton’s favorite color was green.

Argent didn’t focus on the domed ceiling depicting seraphim and mortals alike engaged in some form of romping. The excess of potted trees, flickering lanterns, and delicate wood furniture that lent the room a forested feel all blurred behind the woman gliding into the midst of all the frippery.

“Welton,” she breathed. “It’s like … like an enchanted forest.”

“Thank you, madam.” With brusque movements Welton turned down the dark coverlet on the bed, uncovering butter-beige linens stitched with tiny leaves that matched the drapes tumbling from the canopy. Next he poured water into the basin from the ceramic pitcher and fluffed the few towels on the stand.

“Welton,” Argent growled.

“Yes, sir?” His butler turned to him.

“Get out.”

“Of course, sir.” Never breaking form, the butler bowed again to them both, and left.

Argent turned to Millie, who stood in the center of the room regarding him from under disapproving brows. “You could have thanked him,” she reproached. “He’s really very good.”

“Take it off.” The words left his mouth the moment he thought them.

Her breasts lifted in an audible breath and stayed there. “You … mean … my dress?”

Striding to the washbasin, he retrieved a cream towel and plunged it into the warm water. “I mean your makeup. I want to see you.”

She approached him in an arc instead of a straight line, her hands clutching her skirts and her teeth chewing at her bottom lip. She held her hand out for the towel and he gave it to her, stepping back so she could use the mirror.

Her reflection added magic to the experience that Argent could never have guessed. He could see the tumble of her hair and the curve of her ass from behind, as well as her face in the mirror. A face so beautiful that his chest ached if he looked upon it for too long.

After a tense moment, she picked up the soap, dipped the linen, and ran it across a portion of the fabric before lifting it to her face. She washed the kohl from her eyes first, their shape morphing from long to round.

“Most men prefer me with this on,” she remarked nervously. “It—covers all the imperfections and accentuates the beauty.”

“You have no imperfections,” he said honestly.

Her movements stalled, and she stared at him with a queer sort of surprise on her face.

Argent didn’t give a dusty fuck how other men preferred her to look when they took her. She was his now. Tonight. That was all that mattered.

Except, he had the troubling desire to murder every man who’d ever seen her like this. Who’d ever drunk the ambrosia that was her lips. He knew the impulse was illogical, understood that he was a bleeding hypocrite. Hell, he even knew she was a liar. She’d denied any acquaintance with Lord Thurston, but she’d fucked him. Had had a child by him.

He didn’t care about the lie. Everyone lied to save their own skin, he didn’t expect any different from her.

But to think of that middle-aged twat with his soft, aristocratic hands on her …

A fire ignited beneath his lungs, and suddenly danger shimmered between them. It fed the violence of his need.

It took thirty years of trained self-control to stand an arm’s length away from her and watch clean, pale skin emerge from beneath the powder, and soft, pink lips glow from beneath the slick rouge.

Once she’d scrubbed everywhere with the soap, she bent down and cupped her hands in the basin, splashing her face and drying it.

When she straightened, he was behind her, and her lips parted with a soft gasp as he
finally
put his hands on her. Her shoulders were warm through the fabric of her gown, and Argent realized his hands were cold and clammy.

“You shouldn’t open your mouth like that,” he warned. “It makes me want to fill it with something of mine.” His hands slid around to the front of her, the chilly pads of his fingers brushing at the exposed skin of her chest, inducing a shudder down the entire frame of her body. “My fingers, my tongue, my cock, I don’t care. I just know that it’s warm and wet inside of you.”

She snapped her mouth closed and stood stock-still beneath his touch. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the low bodice of her dress in rapid bursts. She was tense and wide-eyed in the mirror, small nostrils flaring.

He’d thought he’d just wanted that mouth, those full, soft lips pillowing his. But he’d been wrong.

He wanted to consume her with so much muscle-clenching need that he couldn’t possibly decide where to begin. He felt strong and dominant, like a true hunter. If she’d retreated, if she’d run, he’d have given chase. He’d have pounced on her and bit down on her neck, submitting her to the indignity of his lust.

But she stood. Still and panting. Waiting. Trembling.

“Are you going to fight me?” he asked, and didn’t breathe until she answered.

“No.”

God, but her features were perfection, her skin so flawless, so tantalizingly fine. Her face a perfect oval, her cheekbones high and proud. To look at her was intoxicating …

To touch her was divine.

He remembered how he’d sat in the shadows of the opera box and salivated over the white flesh glowing incandescent in the light of so many lanterns. He’d dreamt, no, fantasized, of all that soft skin beneath his fingertips. And now he had it.

He could barely believe it.

His hands felt large and clumsy as he drew them from her chest, over the thin flesh of her clavicles, and swept at the curve of her dainty neck.

“Just please,” she said, panting. “Don’t—don’t be cruel.”

“I won’t,” he growled, a promise he made to himself as much as to her. His hand reached around to the satin of her cheek, and pulled it until her chin aligned with her shoulder. From behind her his breath teased at the tendrils of hair by the dainty shell of her ear. “But neither will I be kind.”

He took her mouth with his, plunging his tongue inside in a slick parody of what his body was about to do to hers. But first he had to taste her. If he only had one night, one time, then he’d spend it with his mouth on her. Tasting the salt of her skin, the syrup of her lips, the sweetness of her tongue. He didn’t just want to kiss her, he wanted to
devour
her. To taste everywhere she was white and tender. Everywhere she was pink and lush.

As long as she didn’t tell him no. As long as he never climbed on top of her. Because he couldn’t. He couldn’t split her legs apart and hold her down with the weight of his body. He didn’t do that.

He
never
did that.

Small, tentative fingers rested over his hand on her cheek as she slightly turned into him. Her pliable mouth opened beneath his, and she began to return his kiss in soft, uncertain strokes. Every one of her movements ignited tiny fires of bliss in his loins.

Her scent filled his nostrils and held him prisoner. Soap, sweat, and something that reminded him of late summer berries. Everything about her enticed him, and the clenching of the muscles beneath his stomach pulled a sound from his throat so desperate, it could have been a plea.

In that moment, he could feel that she lost her fear.

And he lost his mind.

Suddenly, his lust had teeth, and it chewed through him with the hunger of a pack of winter wolves. It ripped through his veins with the violence of the wild, and he plunged his hand into her hair, pulling it back and exposing her neck to the firelight.

The sound she made startled him, because it was one he’d never heard before. An answering hunger. A sibilant whisper of submission.

Fuck
. He’d planned to rip her dress to shreds. To fill his hands with the pale breasts that had tormented his memory since he’d seen them in the bath. He wanted to see, touch, and taste all of her. To draw the experience out so that the memory would last him a lifetime.

But with one groan, she’d undone him. Stripped him of whatever humanity he’d possessed and turned him into nothing but a creature of inflamed, violent need.

His hand still twisted in her hair, they stumbled to the bed. Once in front of it, he bent her over and tossed layer after layer of heavy skirts up her waist.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, her voice laced with a new hesitancy. It was too late now, he was too far gone. Blood pounded in his loins so powerfully the pleasant ache had turned into raw pain.

“Fucking you,” he gritted out. Finally his hands found her undergarments and they became a casualty of his frenzy.

“Like … this?” She rose up on her elbows to look back at him and he seized her hair, pressing her cheek into the covers.

“I only fuck like this.” As he pulled his cock from his trousers, even the pressure of his hand threatened to overwhelm him. It had never been like this, though. Not ever. If he had a thought that was his own, a moment to stop and consider, he might fear this power she had over him. The way she siphoned his control until there was none left.

“Don’t look back at me,” he ordered. He couldn’t look her in the eyes. She’d see too much, or he would; either way it would be his undoing.

She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, as though preparing herself. “I won’t.”

He looked down and nearly came. Her ass was pale and perfect, curving into long, slim legs that disappeared into black stockings.

Christ Almighty.
He wasn’t going to last long enough to get inside of her.

He closed his eyes and ran his fingers through the soft hair at the apex of her thighs, relieved to find it moist. She was ready.

Her breath hitched when the throbbing head found her opening, but she didn’t move or struggle. In fact, her hips curled, lifting back and pressing toward him. Coating his already weeping tip with her wetness.

With a groan born half of pleasure and half of exquisite pain, he bucked his hips forward and plowed into her.

He was ripped in separate directions as two phenomena he’d never before experienced tore his consciousness to shreds.

Something like a pop, or a tear, as he drove into her body.

He registered resistance. Even as he thrust again, and yet again.

Her flesh clenched him like a fist as he moved within her. Tight. Too. Fucking. Tight. Her body pulled and strained at him, forcing a release. Even though the darkness behind his eyelids exploded with the pulses of pure rapture pouring from his cock. His teeth ground together as he withdrew, his seed bathing her pale thighs.

The pleasure, it felt like it would never stop. That
he
would never stop. The burning began at his spine and shot from his body in long, wet throbbing waves. He hadn’t known that for all the depths of pain a man could endure, the spectrum of pleasure was equally excruciating.

But then he saw her eyes squeezed in pain. Noted the trembling of her chin until she pulled her lower lip into her mouth and bit down.

And his pleasure was strangled by a terrible knowledge. Millie LeCour had told him the truth today. And for years, she’d been lying.

When she said Lord Thurston and Lord Benchley had never had her, she’d been honest.

But her lie, her lie was much larger than her truth.

Because when Argent looked down and saw the blood, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jakub LeCour was not her son.

Because up until only a moment ago, Millie had been a virgin.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Well,
Millie thought as she felt a wet cloth roughly swipe at her bare thighs before her dress was tossed back over her flanks. All in all that wasn’t … so bad. A bit of a pinch, is all, maybe a tearing sensation, but she’d experienced more pain removing a fake mustache and beard a while back when they’d accidentally used too much adhesive. That had brought tears spilling and her skin had been raw for an entire day. This didn’t even register on that scale.

The painful part, at least, was over rather quickly. Somehow, Millie had been under the impression that the actual act, itself, lasted quite a while. In fact, she was experiencing a troubling sense of unfulfillment.

Kissing Argent had caused an ache to bloom between her legs, a moist, throbbing, sweet sort of insistence that hadn’t yet subsided. His hunger, his need, even his foul language had created an answering call from inside her that she hadn’t at all expected.

From what she’d gleaned from the whispers of the other actresses and the bawdy scenes in performances, this business of intercourse was supposed to culminate in some sort of … climax. A rhythmic sort of affair with a very vocal
to do
at the end. She’d also heard that a certain pride came from bringing a man to his completion quickly, because it meant your skills as a lover were that much more advanced.

Millie decided to be proud. Her end of the bargain was complete, and she’d sealed the contract with her body. Nothing to it, really. She couldn’t even remember why she’d been so worried about it. Yawning, she remained prostrate on the fluffy counterpane for another moment, wondering what the silent assassin was about.

“Do you mind if I … can I sit up now?”

He said nothing. Had he left? The man moved about silent as a ghost, and could very well have slithered away without a word.

He’d better
not
have done.

Pushing herself upright, Millie turned to perch on the edge of the bed and came face-to-face with brilliant blue flame in the form of the wrath burning in Argent’s eyes.

He towered over her, wide as a Titan and just as dangerous, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.