The Hunter (44 page)

Nuzzling the muscled length of his arm, Millie lifted its heavy weight and wriggled beneath it, settling her head on his chest. Listening to his heart beat was fast becoming one of her favorite things to do. As she nestled into his warm, solid body, it tensed for an uncertain moment, and then reacted in exactly the way she’d hoped. Arms closed around her, leg bent to make room for hers to entwine with it, even his cheek settled atop her crown.

She might not be his first lover, but Millie was sure she was the first woman to ever snuggle with the mercenary Christopher Argent. That fact gave her a sense of possession, of proprietary status that was among the most exclusive in the world. In the ever-expanding British empire, there were a disparate amount of duchesses, a manifold of marchionesses, and a considerable number of countesses. But in the arms of this man, Millie felt like a queen. Unparalleled and protected. There was nothing in the world that compared. And she’d know. Millie had ridden the euphoria of a standing ovation. Had cashed a banknote with more zeroes on it than she’d expected to see in a lifetime. Had enjoyed the success of acclaim and renown.

Somehow, this quiet moment surpassed all that.

Perhaps because she was in the arms of the man with whom she was falling in love.

Closing her eyes she breathed in the heady truth of it. She loved the warm smell of his skin, clean and sharp and altogether masculine. Loved every scar on his hard body, and every shard of ice in his eyes. She loved how every moment of pleasure and amusement they shared he treated like a rare gift he didn’t quite know what to do with, and she desperately wanted to fill his bleak and empty life with joy. To teach him how to be happy. How to laugh. She’d give her entire fortune to hear him laugh.

She knew he was unsure of his heart, not only of what it contained, but if he even had one to begin with. But he did. She’d seen it in his eyes, and her next move was to coax it into her hand. It would be a large undertaking, but she’d done it before. She’d won the love of the whole of Britain, and not a small amount of the Continent, truth be told. If she set her mind to something, she attained it. And her mind, her heart, was now set on the man whose big, naked body she was currently draped across.

Now … where to start?

A proclamation of her intentions seemed a bit premature, and if she knew anything about men, she knew that they needed the illusion that everything was their idea so as not to feel trapped or coerced. Christopher Argent might be a strange and singular man, but he was a man nonetheless, and she felt it wise to leave the pace of their relationship up to him. He would need more time to process his feelings, as he’d not done so in quite some time.

And, she supposed, she was getting ahead of herself. What if her feelings for him surpassed his own? What were his intentions, his expectations? Perhaps she should find out. However, one did not just demand such things, did they? Not even of a man prone to sometimes offensive brutal honesty.

She decided to start small. Now that contracts, threats, and coercion no longer precipitated their interaction, she’d need to find something else.

A wide smile stole over her mouth as the perfect idea sweetened the moment.

She craned her neck to look up at him and found him frowning up at the canopy.

Resting her chin on the meat of his chest, she said, “You’re a wonderful dancer.”

He glanced down at her, the grooves between his eyes deepening. “What?”

“I was just remembering when we first met. I thought you were so handsome, and intriguing, but when you asked me to dance, I was afraid you’d be too big and clumsy to make an effective partner.”

His eyes darted away.

So, they were back to that, were they?

Refusing to be deterred, Millie smoothed her hand over his pectoral, then angled south, exploring the taut ridges of his ribs and stomach. “And then you quite literally swept me into that waltz, beneath the blue candelabras, and you were shockingly graceful.” Pressing a kiss to his skin, she licked the salt of it from her lips and sighed her contentment. “I’ve never been so seduced.”

His nostrils flared and his lips twitched. A smile, perhaps? Or was it her hopeful imagination?

“I heard you singing to Jakub,” she confessed. “You have a lovely voice.”

He didn’t thank her, but she watched the spread of his reaction coloring his golden skin ruddy. An assassin who blushed? How could she resist him?

“We both know you weren’t raised as a gentleman,” she ventured, hoping to show him that she was willing to discuss his past, to share it with him. “Was it your mother who taught you to sing and dance?”

His throat worked over a swallow and his eyes found hers again in the lantern light. “It was my mother who taught me to sing, but I learned to waltz elsewhere.”

“Oh, really? And just who taught you that particular skill?” Some saucy tart, probably. Millie narrowed her eyes, picturing a pretty blond woman with bigger breasts than hers waltzing with him before bending over and offering up her—

“Welton.”

Millie gasped. Then snorted before dissolving into an unladylike fit of giggles that shook the entire bed. “You’re … joking,” she accused over spasms of mirth.

“Why would I be?” he asked in that endearing way of his, true confusion transforming his features into something younger, almost boyish. “It became apparent to me that in order to take contracts among the
ton,
I needed to be able to blend into their social environs.” The more she laughed, the more he explained. “I have trained myself to memorize quite a lot of fighting stances and such that flow from one to the other. Dancing is rather like that, I suppose, just set to music instead of breath.”

Her giggles ended on a sigh and she squeezed him fondly. “Do you like to dance?”

His shrug lifted her head where she rested it. “I don’t know.”

“You seemed to enjoy yourself that night,” she reminded him.

“That wasn’t me.”

Ah yes, that night he’d been Bentley Drummle. Charming, amiable, wicked Bentley Drummle. And yet … she hadn’t detected artifice during the time they’d spent together that night. He hadn’t hurt her, because he’d wanted her. Because … perhaps he’d been enjoying himself?

“I would do it again, sometime…” She chanced a look at him to gauge his reaction. The darkness gathering in his aspect worried her, but she forged ahead. “Think of it, you could fetch me in your fancy carriage, escort me out, even back to the Sapphire Room if you preferred. We could waltz until we couldn’t stand it, and then find that dark corner and finish what we started that nigh—”

“Don’t you remember what you said to me?” he asked in a dark voice

“I say a lot of things. Half of them I don’t even mean, let alone remember.” A chill slid along her skin as she searched her memory.

“I haven’t forgotten.” He sat up so abruptly she was nearly tossed off him. Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, he gave her his back. “
After this is done with, and we part ways. I never want to see you again.
” His chin touched his shoulder, but he didn’t look back at her. “That’s what you said, and I gave you my word.”

Millie sat up, clutching the covers to her breast. “I—I changed my mind, obviously.”

“That’s not how this works.” He stood, retrieved his trousers and thrust his powerful legs into them.

Millie was so astounded it took her until he was punching his arms into the sleeves of his shirt to reply. “Don’t leave.” She hated how small her voice sounded, how vulnerable he made her feel. “We just…”

“I should have left before all this. I should have gone home.” How a man could sound cold and furious at the same time, Millie would never know, but he did. “I should have dropped you here and slipped away. Then none of this would have happened.”

Millie didn’t understand. Half of her was trying to figure out just where the conversation had turned, and the other half was desperately thinking of a way to make him stop, or at least slow down. “What we did just now, Christopher, it was wonderful. This, between us, it could be the start of something meaningful. Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that what you’re running from? Because I can help you. Just stay, and we’ll—”

He whirled on her. “I run from
no one
!” he thundered. “And I fear nothing. I.
Feel.
Nothing.”

“Liar,” Millie accused. She knew better, she’d witnessed his emotions, had connected with them and let them feed her own.

“You think
you’re
so brave?” He stalked closer to her, his features positively Siberian by the time he reached the edge of her bed. “You think you can help me with
what,
Millie? Clean the gore off my clothes when I return from a kill? Spend my blood money filling my mansion with expensive and meaningless things? Fuck life back into me when I’m dead inside? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Millie flinched at his cruel vulgarity, but she knew what he was doing. Lashing out, pushing her away. Testing her limits. Thrusting her chin forward, she fought against the hurt and reached for kindness and understanding. “You’ve been so empty these past years, dead inside, as you say, and you’re coming back to the land of the living. I can
see
it. I can feel it.” She rose to her knees, still clutching the sheet to her chest and reaching for him with her other hand. “I want to love you, Christopher Argent, and I want you to let me. You don’t have to kill people anymore.”

“You’re wrong.” He pulled away from her, just out of reach. “I am a killer. I’m already bound for hell, I don’t need baggage for the journey.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous?” she snapped, her temper perilously close to doing that very thing. “Don’t you see? Everyone who ever mistreated you, hurt you, oppressed you, their villainy is perpetuated by
your
hands. You’re letting those men who killed your mother shape who you are, or at the very least, what you do.”

“Careful, Millie,” he warned.

“It’s the
truth
. No one has a charted course. Winds shift, tides change, and even if he’s fighting against all of that, a man can choose where his journey ends—”

“Unless a man like me ends it for him.”

Millie inched forward on her knees. “You could be a different man. A better man.”

“Why would you all unmake me?” he fumed, his eyes flashing with silver and blue lightning for the briefest moment as he seized her arm in a punishing grip.

She shook her head. What did he mean by “you all”? No one was trying to unmake him, just the opposite. She was trying to set him free.

He didn’t pause to allow her a reply. “I’m a hunter. I’m a
killer
. It’s all I am, it’s all I’ve ever been. If you love me, you’re in love with a murderer. Could you do that? Could you watch me leave the house knowing that every time I return there’s one less person in this world? One more widow, one more orphan, one more soul to condemn me to hell?”

“I—I…”

He actually looked disgusted as he released her. “I think you have your answer.”

“No.”
She recovered her senses, reaching out and grasping the fabric of his shirt. “I was thinking about Jakub, I—”

She’d been thinking that they might have made a child. She opened her mouth to remind him that he’d vowed never to leave a bastard.

“Think of what kind of father I’d make.”

Her mouth snapped shut.

His features actually softened as he pried her fingers from his sleeve and held her hand in his. “You’re a good mother.” He kissed her hand and released it, backing away. “Men like me, we don’t survive long enough to grow old. We don’t have wives and children, we have enemies and allies. The people we care about are liabilities, do you want that for Jakub?”

He had a point, a point that was beginning to make terrible sense. Tears threatened again, and Millie began to hate how many times he’d made her cry. Millie blinked, tears searing hot paths down her cheeks. Why did she always do this? See the impossible and reach for it? Ignore the obstacles in her way? Just assume that she could make something better, greater, just by wishing it so?

Christopher didn’t look at her again, but his nostrils flared and his muscles were clenched and turgid as he gathered the rest of his things. “I’m a creature of the darkness, Millie, and you belong in the spotlight.” He reached for the door and opened it, pausing before he left. “But you were right, for what it’s worth … I did enjoy dancing with you that night.”

Millie made a strangled sound as the door closed softly behind him. She’d been accurate when she’d told Farah earlier that her heart was only bruised.

Because now, it was well and truly broken.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
NINE

Pain was something Christopher had learned to deal with at an early age. Where so-called normal folk sought comfort and warmth, he’d spent much of his youth just trying to make things a little less intolerable. Comfort made you weak. Hunger made you strong. No matter how horrific, nothing was unbearable, because as long as one was alive, then obviously, it could be borne. Every moment was naught but a moment. Every day was naught but a day. The sun would rise in the morning, night would fall, and the earth would turn around.

These were things that Christopher knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.

People would die. Sometimes because of him, other times in spite of him. The species would propagate. The innocent would suffer. The powerful would build monuments. The world’s religions would spill each other’s blood, ironically in the name of a God of love. The rich would amass more money. The poor would crawl on top of each other to reach for a piece of bread. Women and boys would sell themselves in the streets.

The sun would rise in the morning, and he would feel pain. Night would fall, and his chest would be a cavern of empty loneliness. The earth would turn around, and his blood would threaten to cease flowing, for it hurt too much to pump it through his veins.

These were the things that Christopher Argent knew.

He’d gone to see Millie again at the theater today, watched her hungrily from the shadows during the early-afternoon dress rehearsal of the play she was debuting this very night. A dramatic comedy about a courtesan and a married lawyer. It seemed she and the director/playwright were very affectionate with each other.