Page 84 of The Hunter
Losing her virginity. The idea of a noble marriage. Her illicit encounter with Argent only hours before…
Argent. Her silent sentinel. Cold and large as a Roman marble statue, and just as ponderously well crafted. Would that he were chiseled out of something more forgiving. Something less forbidding. If only he were earth and ash, flesh and blood like all the rest of God’s creatures. Instead of shadow and ice.
He had to be, didn’t he? Because there was heat when he kissed her, and fire when he touched her.
Agitated by the memory of his caress, she’d risen from the foreign bed and sought her son, hoping to find clarity in the presence of his innocence.
But tonight it did little to calm her turbulent spirit and, not wanting to disturb his slumber, she pressed one last kiss to her hand and brushed it onto his cheek. Standing, she retrieved his candle and padded to the door, reassuring herself with one more glance before slipping into the dark, empty hallway.
A sound echoed off the walls and chilled her blood. A cry of distress. One so full of helpless torment and piteous rage, it tore at her heart.
Millie would have thought a tortured spirit haunted these bleak corridors if she’d not recognized the exact source of the deep, awful sound.
Argent. If that stoic, stone-faced man was making such a noise, then the devil himself must be flaying the assassin alive.
Her breaths may as well have been cannon blasts in the silences between the disquieting noise. Millie’s candle trembled in her hand as she inched along the wall of the corridor toward the closet that separated most of the sleeping quarters from the stairs.
She pressed her ear to the cool wood door, but a knock and a powerful scream drove her back. It sounded as if a desperate scuffle raged in the insufficient space on the other side. Why would a man like him banish himself to such a tiny, uncomfortable place? He was master of one of the largest manses in London, and she doubted his long, large frame could even stretch end to end in there.
Could it be that because of his birth in prison, larger rooms made him uncomfortable? Perhaps he felt more at home in a room the size of a small cell. Lord, that was pitiable. But he chose to sleep in there, for all the noise he was making, and… should he have nightmares, they were perhaps the renderings of a buried conscience. Perhaps when one spilled so much blood, it stained not only their hands, but also their dreams.
Caught in a moment of indecision, Millie wondered if she should leave him to do battle with the darkness alone. An instinct as primal as life, itself, told her it wasn’t safe in there. That to open that door was tantamount to sealing her own fate.
A low, tight cry rent her heart in two. It was the sob of a helpless child mingling with the snarl of a wounded beast. If he’d been crying for help, her hand might not have reached for the latch. But that awful sound, it had no place in this world. It was the cry of a soul that knew it had been abandoned to the devil, one of agony layered over hopelessness.
Millie couldn’t comprehend the depths of suffering that could produce such a sound. That could produce such a man.
Her candle flickered as she pulled the door open, casting shadows and dancing light on his prone, writhing body. Hand flying to smother her own horrified gasp, she inched closer to the thrashing giant, for in such a small closet, she only had inches in which to move.
Sweat slicked the temples of his hair as he fought invisible enemies from his back. As far as she could tell, he wore nothing but a white sheet that was now tangled over and around his heavy, muscled limbs. Even in the dim light Millie could see his scars.
She didn’t take time to ponder again how dazzlingly large he was, or how the strain of his muscles rippled so close beneath his skin that veins pressed against the swells of his arms.
His breath hissed through teeth gritted and grinding together, his features taut with torment and rage as his chest bucked against the floor as though someone had thrust a knife through his heart.
A tremor of sympathy overtook her, and Millie leaned down to touch his scarred shoulder, to wake him from whatever hellish dream held him in its thrall.
His warm arm twitched beneath her fingertips.
And then she was beneath him, steel biting into her throat. Her candle and its holder made a muffled sound as it hit the carpet, plunging them into complete darkness. His crushing weight pressed her into the thin mattress, impeding her breath, but she dare not make a move, dare not struggle upward lest he cut her throat.
His breath rasped through the dark, hitting her cheek in hot bursts. He was both death and sex straining above her, a knife against her throat, his erection hard as steel cradled between her legs.
“Christopher?” His name escaped her as a strangled gasp. “Christopher… p-please… don’t.”
A moment passed that may have been the most frightening of her entire life thus far, before a string of blistering words fell from his mouth to her ear.
“Do you have a weapon?” he demanded in a voice made harsh by sleep and anger.
“A weapon?” She wanted to shake her head, but it was impossible… and useless. “Why on earth would I?”
To say he relaxed would be likening a tempest to a storm, but somehow his relief was palpable. “You’re not here to kill me?”
“Heavens,no.”
“Then… have you come to fuck me?”
Stunned into silence by his vulgarity, Millie blinked up into the darkness. Her heart beat like the wings of a trapped butterfly, rushing blood lower and lower until she could no longer feel the knife, only the hard length wedged between her slightly splayed legs.
