Page 93 of The Hunter
“Than who?”
“I held you down. I made you bleed. I—Iforcedyou to fuck me.”
“Forcedis a rather strong—”
“Iforcedyou to fuck me so I wouldn’tmurderyou.” He swiped at the basin, sending it crashing into the far wall with a terrible cacophony of splintering wood and shattering porcelain.
“Well, if you put it in those words, it does sound a little—”
“I slaughtered them for it. They were my first kills.” He resumed pacing. “And now I’ve become one of them.”
Millie was certain no one had ever seen him like this. Wild and distraught. Working himself into a frenzy. She wanted desperately to understand his meaning, but most of the information remained locked within the vaults of nightmarish memories. He must have fought them in his dreams, those mysterious “them.” How many, she wondered, had mistreated and abused him? It had to have been a collaborative effort, to create such a man as this. A committee of evil deeds and violent men. She knew she should be afraid, could feel the adrenaline coursing through her body, again warning her to run.
But she stood her ground, because an intrinsic knowledge told her they were both standing on the precipice of a wall. A wall of ice. And the audible cracks in that wall were beginning to perhaps make him feel unstable. But at any moment they could break away, and she had to be there for it. For him.
“Who arethey?” She stepped forward and he retreated, balling his fists, though she somehow knew he wouldn’t strike her. “What happened to your mother?”
“They held her down… on her back.” His breath sawed in and out of his lungs, the ice in his eyes had melted into an inferno. The flames blue, burning with a rage hotter than any she’d ever before encountered. “They held her beneath them and she didn’t fight. She only begged formylife, told me to look away, but I didn’t. I memorized their faces.Ifought back, and because of me, they gutted her.”
Millie’s hand flew to her mouth, her belly clenched in sympathetic response, both for his mother and for her son. Hot tears welled with painful force and spilled down her cheeks.
“I screamed and screamed and no one came.” His voice broke, but it was the only indication he felt anything other than anger. “I spent the night in a lake of her cold blood, and then next dayIgutted four men. It took me years to kill the guard who’d facilitated her death, who wanted to teach her a lesson, and not before he killed another boy.” His features told her he was reliving a memory that would sicken her, and he enjoyed it. “Blackwell and I took turns with him. To this day I’m not certain who dealt the killing blow.”
“Oh, Christopher…”
“Don’t be kind to me!” He roared. “I amnota wounded child to be pitied. Your tears are wasted. I amArgent. I am the most famous villain that no one has ever truly met and lived to tell about it. I’ve killed more men in the Underworld War than could fit in your precious theater. I’ve beaten men to death in cesspits for money. And what do you think I felt? Victorious? Avenged? Guilt? Pleasure?”
“I—I don’t know.” Millie’s hand moved from her mouth to cover her throbbing, bleeding heart.
“Nothing,”he said darkly. “I felt nothing. Ifeelnothing.”
“That isn’t true,” Millie insisted, her voice trembling with tears. “I don’t believe it.”
“No? I’ve fucked whores and the randy widows of powerful men I was hired to kill. You think I cared about them? About their pleasure? I didn’t. I don’t. I only fucked them because they let me. I took them like dogs, like animals, but at least I never held them beneath me. They could always escape… but you…you.” A large wooden beam with pegs like a coatrack splintered beneath his blow, flying into a column and crashing to the floor.
Millie flinched and locked her knees, forcing herself not to take a retreating step from his gathering rage. It had been brewing inside him for years, for more than a decade. He needed to let it out. He needed to break things. “You’re not going to shock me,” she informed him gently.
“I’m not trying to shock you, I’m telling you the truth. I watched you die on that stage and there was a part of me that knew I could never see it again. That I should have walked away and left you to the mercies of someone else. I could sense myself turning into this… this fiend. And still I tried. Then you begged me not to hurt your son. You said the same words she did that fucking awful night.” He scrubbed his face with rough, brutal hands. “God, Iama monster.”
“But youdidn’thurt my son,” she argued.
“Oh, but I have done, don’t you see? I hurt him because I hurt his mother. I took your innocence. I made you pay for your life with your body.”
“He doesn’t know that!” Millie’s cheeks flamed, not because of his terrible confessions, but because of the scandalous one she was about to make. “Also… truth be told… I’ve never enjoyed making a payment so much.”
He froze. “Don’t, Millie. Don’t grant me absolution or forgiveness. I. Held. You. Down.”
“I wanted it,” she insisted. “I knew when I opened that door, when I woke you… a part of meknewwhat was going to happen. And I wanted it to.”
Some of the flame in his eyes flickered and danced and he made a strangled sound.
The urge to hold him overtook her with such ferocity, her arms ached. Lord, what he’d been through, what he’d survived. Most men would have broken, would have fallen to the earth and lost their minds, or taken their own lives. He’d hidden the shame, the horror, the desperation in a placid lake of darkness. Of blood. And then froze it solid to lock it away.
Unfortunately, it seemed, she was just the storm to dredge the wreckage up from the bottom.
He gaped at her, speechless and stunned, his mouth slightly parted, giving her time to close the gap between them. Reaching out, she spread her fingers over the thick muscle covering his heaving chest. He was still damp, but she didn’t care. He smelled of clean sweat and male, a musk that she’d never thought could be pleasant. Arousing, even. But it was. Whatever this man was made of, the essence of him called to her. Appealed to every sense.
He regarded her as if, for once, she were the hunter, and he the ensnared prey. Beneath her hand, his flesh, hot from exertion and emotion, twitched and flexed. And beneath even that, his heart pounded against her palm.
