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.
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.
