Page 65 of The Hunter
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 hefinallyput 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 todevourher. 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.
Heneverdid 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.
