Page 62 of The Hunter
“I love no one.”
“What about this grand and beautiful house? You must have a great deal of money.”
Again, he responded in the negative. “I have more money than I could spend in three lifetimes. This is the first house I’ve ever lived in and, though I have use for some of it, I’m not essentially attached to it in any way. I’ve lived in many other places.”
When she looked up again, he saw a strange desolation in her eyes that baffled him to no end. “Where have you lived?”
He was glad they were talking… it made him less likely to slice the thread, press her against the wall, and heave into her for the two thrusts it would take for his full arousal to release its seed. He was so hard. So fucking ready.
Distraction was an excellent way to endure physical torture. Wu Ping had taught him that at a very young age, and Argent had found exceptional use for it. Besides, he enjoyed her voice.
He searched his memory for the answers to her questions. “I’d a room in Wapping for a while after I traveled with a band of pit fighters, and slept where I could. Then before that, Newgate.”
“Newgate Prison?” She gasped. “What did you do?”
“Railroad work, mostly, and fight training with a kung fu master who’d been nabbed for embezzlement.”
“No, no. I mean, what crime did you commit to get incarcerated? It couldn’t have been… you know… what you do, because they would have hanged you otherwise.”
Argent could sense her distress brimming to the surface, and wondered how much more information he should impart to her. He couldn’t comprehend the soft, bruised look in her eyes, nor the change in her voice’s pitch. She didn’t particularly like him or hold him in high esteem. He’d tried to kill her, not once, but three times. In scant moments from now, he was going to fuck her for payment.
And when he’d disposed of all who posed a danger to her and her boy, he was going to walk away from them. To return to the shadows and leave them to the light in which they lived. It had occurred to him, while sitting in Dorian Blackwell’s study and watching the man he’d often thought was almost as ruthless and unfeeling as himself adore the woman he’d claimed, that he might want a similar situation. Someone he could see every day. Someone he could fuck when he wanted. Someone else to stitch his wounds and fill the silence with something more pleasant.
But he’d been a fool to consider it, and this conversation proved it. If he had nothing to lose, he had nothing to give. And what woman would want that? He wasn’t charming unless trying to lure someone into the darkness where he could kill them. He wasn’t educated, though Dorian had taught him to read, and he did make use of the books in his library upon occasion. He wasn’t principled, scrupulous, kind, romantic, or interesting.
He didn’t feel things like others felt them, if at all. He didn’t waste his time on guilt, worry, or empathy. Up until a few days ago, he’d considered himself nothing more than a machine, a hydraulic contraption with cogs and wheels that required fuel to work, sleep to function, and whores for the release of pressure and the maintenance of equilibrium.
This woman caring for him had taught him differently, but he wasn’t convinced of an improvement. All she’d done was to uncover some kind of void he’d been hiding. Some deep, cavernous—no,bottomlesspit of desire and unfulfillment which he had no bloody idea how to contain.
Her sex was what it called for at the moment. What it demanded.
But Argent had a feeling it wouldn’t stop until it claimed her soul. He couldn’t let that happen. This demon of insatiable emptiness was his own, and he had to do his best not to show it to her.
Best to warn her away.
“I was born in Newgate while my mother served a fifteen-year sentence for prostitution, burglary, and assaulting a nobleman. She’d been seventeen when she was arrested, and twenty-eight when she died.”
“She… died in prison?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The void within him opened, screamed, began to swirl with awesome force and insatiable demands. It warned him. It calmed him. It gave him something to focus on.
“In a pool of her own blood.”
“No!”The back of her hand covered her mouth, and a small bit of his blood stained the soft tips of her fingers. She reached for him, but stopped herself in time, noting the blood for herself, and examining her fingers with a somewhat horrified expression.
Bloody fuck and writhing hell. It had begun already. Blood on her hands.
His blood. On.Her.Hands.
No one could spend any good amount of time in his presence before they were covered in it.
No good could come of this.
“They released me when I came of age.” He attempted the comfort angle again. “I’ve done all right for myself in the fifteen or so years since.”
