The Hunter (30 page)

Was she being a fool? Was she excusing an evil man because he was going to do an evil thing on her behalf?

What did that say about her own culpability?

Millie’s sad sigh echoed back at her as she pushed the thought from her mind. This room was the most well used in the entire spare mansion, she observed as she turned to inspect it. He
lived
here. His very essence permeated the warm shades of the walls and turned them into something eerie. If Millie had to conjure a manifestation of his mind, of Argent’s very existence, this grand ballroom would be it. Bones and structure of rare beauty, indeed, of flawless design and composition. A dark and phantasmal interior, unable to fulfill its intended glory because instruments of death, of cold violence and merciless destruction, dominated the entire vast room until it was filled with emptiness and the expectation of pain and blood.

Even the shadows.

It was from one of those shadows that Argent melted like a silent apparition. His cold blue eyes glinted like the steel in her hand from an expression equally as hard.

Startled, Millie gasped when she saw him, the knife slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor with an ominous echo. Her mouth opened, though no sound escaped, as she took in the pure awe-inspiring vision before her. Though she’d given her body to the man, she’d never truly had the opportunity to
see
him.

Not like this.

Naked to the waist, he wore only a pair of exotic-looking blue silk trousers that flowed about his long, thick legs as though to hide their movement. Bare arms bulged at his sides from the golden slopes of his massive shoulders. Millie’s mouth went dry as moisture collected somewhere lower. So many, many scars marked him. His thick torso, ribbed with strength and muscle, was a lesson in violence. Gashes interrupted his ribs and the hard, straining ridges of his stomach. And, dear God, his shoulder and the swell of the bicep below it was a webbed mess of gnarled skin. Like a burn, but perhaps worse.

This was a man who evoked fear in the hearts of all who would see him thus. So why not her? Why did the thrill that washed her spine in shivers have nothing to do with apprehension?

Because she hadn’t known. Hadn’t had a clue that he was this—this
beautiful
.

“Did I alarm you?” he asked, correctly interpreting the cause of her astonishment.

“A-a little,” she confessed. It was a very different thing, Millie realized, to
feel
the strength of a body and to
gaze
upon it. Many times over the handful of days she’d known Christopher Argent, his unequaled size and might had been manifest to her touch. In the way his hands gripped her. In the swells of his arms beneath his coat, or the hard planes of unyielding muscle she pressed her cheek against in order to hear his heart beating.

But to appreciate his raw, brutal masculinity with only the sense of sight was a truly unparalleled experience. He was, in a word,
magnificent
. Again he evoked the image of a fallen angel, for it seemed to Millie that such obvious physical power could belong to no mortal man. That here in the realm of coarse and inelegant humanity, such precise and chiseled limbs could not exist unless shaped of some other earth than flesh. Marble, perhaps. Or iron.

Hadn’t he mentioned that he’d worked forced labor on the railway? He had been forged in the quarries and iron yards of prison.

“Do I frighten you?” He stalked closer, taking a circular approach instead of a straight line.

Did he have to ask? Couldn’t a man such as him, a predator, sense the fear in his prey? Was she afraid?
Yes
. She was terrified. Not just of him, but of herself, of the frightening heat spilling through her. Of the urges compelling her toward him. Of the dark and carnal things she wanted to elicit from him. Today, right now, he was the stoic assassin, violent and cynical and ready to be about the business of killing.

This man wouldn’t hurt her, she was
almost
certain.

He was most dangerous as the man from the night before. Wild and aroused, hungry for a satisfaction only she could bring him, and willing to take it if need be. And what Millie feared the most, was that she wanted him to. She wanted to give it to him again, and this time, take the pleasure that was her due. She wanted to tell him what to do … Which shocked her as she’d never before experienced such an impulse.

For a fee, she could now wield his lethality like that knife in her hand. Thrust him at her enemies until their blood painted the ground and her child was safe. There was a dangerous sort of hypnotic power in that knowledge. That a man like this would attack at her slightest command.

But what if she could take it further? What if he allowed her the same command over his body in a more carnal fashion? What would it be like, to order his hands upon her, and to have him comply? To direct his strength and command his pleasure? To withhold his climax until she’d had her own. To make him beg for her mercy, as others had pleaded for his?

Lord, something was wrong with her. She had to stop this. She had to get control over herself before she did something utterly idiotic. Something they both regretted.

“You startled me, is all,” she lied. “I’ve never seen you … like this.”

“Yes, well.” He glanced down at his own torso. “Welton said you might be appalled by my scars. Would you like me to find a shirt?”

“No!” Millie protested. Then, realizing she’d spoken too fervently, she cleared her throat and tried again, diverting her eyes from the feast of fascination that was his bare chest. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Argent. If you would just, um, tell me what it is you … needed to discuss with me here, I’ll leave you to your…” She gestured to the room at large, uncertain what exactly it was he did in this room. “Your exercise.”

He prowled toward her, the flow of his pants causing him to look as though he floated over the polished floor rather than walked across it.

It struck Millie, not for the first time, how silently he moved for such a large,
large
man. He slithered close, too close, this king of vipers, and the warmth from his bare skin washed Millie in stomach-clenching awareness.

“You mean to tell me, my body does not disgust you?” he asked, something glimmering from the depths of his eyes that she’d not yet seen.

Millie was loath to call a man like this self-conscious or bashful. And yet, that strange attentiveness he conveyed nudged her for an answer.

“No,” she said again, slower this time. “Indeed, I find it rather more diverting than disgusting.”

She’d the sense she pleased him, though he didn’t smile.

He did have scars, but to her they represented a very intriguing combination of mystery and masculinity. They were a testament to his fortitude and vitality. The only reason she’d erase them, would be to make it as though they’d never been. To spare him the agony of their wounds. She wanted to press her lips against each one and somehow clear the memory of the pain from his mind.

That impulse became so intense, Millie literally found herself blinking away tears. And again, she was thrust into dangerous territory. There needed to be less between them and more
in between
them. More darkness. More space. More clothing.

He leaned closer, and Millie wondered if he realized what he was doing, bringing that hard mouth toward hers. She put her hand out to stop him. To demand that he tell her what he wanted and let her go.

But the moment her hand touched the fine webbing of scars on his shoulder what escaped was, “How did this happen?” She snatched her hand back and held it to her heart. Not because the burned skin had felt uneven and yet unnaturally smooth beneath her fingertips, but because touching him had felt better than she’d remembered.

His eyes narrowed on the hand she held against her as though she’d bemused him, or perhaps rejected him. He didn’t turn from her, though his gaze dulled and he looked away.

“Years ago, on the railway line, an enemy attempted to drown me in hot tar. I was able to fight him off, but not before some of the tar spilled down my shoulder and part of my arm. I couldn’t get to it before it hardened on my skin.”

Millie couldn’t think of one thing to say, so instead she reached out again, pressing her hand to his taut shoulder as an aching fury threatened to smother her. “D-did you … kill him?” she finally gathered the courage to ask.

He nodded, both of their eyes trained on the smooth, pale hand she held against his scarred flesh. “Caved in his skull with a rock, but the damage to my body had been done.”

A dark pleasure speared through her, that the man who’d caused him such an injury had met such an ignoble end.

“How did you remove the tar?” she asked around a thickening voice, already knowing the terrible answer but feeling that she owed it to him to listen. “Did you have to—tear it away yourself?”

His shoulder flexed beneath her hand, power rolling under remembered pain. “No, actually. In Newgate, two ruthless boys, the Blackheart Brothers, Dorian Blackwell and Dougan Mackenzie, spent all night ripping away bits of my flesh along with the tar. We’d formed an alliance some years before when Dougan had saved my life by pulling us out of the deadly prison ship lines and into the railway gang. Though we worked well together, we were all violent youths, and so avoided each other when possible. But that night of my pain and their patient work solidified loyalties between us all.”

Millie’s eyes misted. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend the torture he’d endured. “Are you—still loyal to them?” she queried.

He remained staring at her hand as though it puzzled him. “Dougan is dead now, for all intents and purposes, but Dorian Blackwell and I have spent a lifetime trading terrible favors. And thus it will ever be, I expect.”

Terrible favors.
Millie drew her hand away slowly. How easy it was to forget, to ignore the monster born of nights such as the one that left this terrible brand on his flesh. These scars should serve as a reminder, a reminder of the stains on his soul. They should repel her instead of attract her. They should evoke fear instead of compassion.

But when it came to Christopher Argent, things never seemed to be as they
should
be.

“Have you ever hurt anyone, Millie?” he murmured.

It took her a moment for the question to register, so distracted was she by the electric tingle in her hand. “I—I’m certain I’ve said things I’m ashamed of, that I’ve done underhanded—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I mean, have you ever physically hurt anyone? Cut them, struck them. Broken them.”

Millie took an involuntary step back. “Never,” she whispered. “Why would you ask me such a thing?”

His eyes turned a liquid blue in the lantern light before he turned from her. “It is the reason I brought you here,” he explained as he moved to the wall and selected a knife with a deeply grooved handle. “I want to teach you how.”

*   *   *

She couldn’t marry the duke, Christopher Argent decided as he, yet again, fended off a surprisingly strong attack to his throat. A man would need both hands to be able to handle a woman like this. It had taken her some time to overcome her fear of hurting him, but once she had, Millie seemed to find a previously unexplored enthusiasm for violence.

He knew he should feel ashamed again, for listening to the lady’s conversation back at her apartments, but the feminine murmurs had drawn him down the hall, and on the list of his sins, eavesdropping was relatively low.

He’d caught Chief Inspector Carlton Morley’s name, but missed most of what they’d said about the man. He’d most definitely heard about Lord Trenwyth, however. And the crux of that conversation was like a knife to the belly every time he remembered what they’d said.

Millie wanted a hero.

And Argent was anything but that. He was, in effect, the very definition of a villain. A hero-maker, as so-called good men would brag about his demise.

Chief Inspector Morley certainly would.

Argent had encountered Trenwyth only once, at a session in the House of Lords he’d attended with Dorian Blackwell years ago. The duke was one of the only men tall enough to look Argent straight in the eye, and in doing so, they’d recognized each other. Not from a previous introduction, but as one killer distinguishes another. For a moment, Trenwyth, Blackwell, and Argent stood in the midst of maybe the most civilized building in the known world and circled each other like wild predators. It was as though a wolf, a jaguar, and a viper converged upon the edges of their respective territories and had to decide whether to fight or to parlay.

It was Dorian’s wife, Farah, who’d saved them from such a decision by stepping into the circle and dazzling them all with her smile, thus creating neutral ground.

Christopher had forgotten that day until this one. Had thrust the unnaturally handsome duke from his mind, as the man had gone off to India to amass a higher body count, and Christopher had remained in London.

To do the very same.

But Millie couldn’t be a duchess. The impediments of that court would become shackles after so long. She would despise marriage to a military man, barking orders and regimenting her day. Crawling on top of her night after night, pressing her into the bed as he used her perfect body to forget the atrocities he’d committed in the name of the crown.

At that image, a low rumble clawed its way out of his burning chest and escaped between his clenched teeth. Millie’s eyes widened upon his face, and she took a step away from him.

“Don’t get frustrated with me,” she reproved with fire sparking in her dark eyes. “I don’t do this for a living, and I’m trying very hard to learn.” Planting her balled fists on her hips, she studied him for a moment longer, and then blinked as a softer, more apprehensive expression overtook her lovely features. “Did I—hurt you?”

“No,” he said, rubbing again at that sharp ache in the cavern of his chest, not missing the way her gaze followed the movement with an arrested expression. Christopher looked down, and then dropped his hand. Was he … lying to her? Had she caused this pang in his chest? Was she the reason he lately felt like one large open wound?