Page 94 of The Hunter
“I feel that there is something here between us.” Her fingers spread and she stepped closer, pressing her other hand against his chest. “Something more than just a business arrangement. I think you feel it too, growing from the most impossible circumstances.”
He remained silent but for his heaving breaths and pounding heart, and Millie went on, taking his lack of rejection as encouragement.
“I know you’ve done unspeakable things. That you’ve suffered immeasurably. And I ache for you, Christopher.”
“No one calls me ‘Christopher.’ I told you, I am Argent.” But slowly, so slowly, his hands reached up to cover hers. Hard and rough as brick, but tentative as a moth’s wings.
Millie smiled up at him, enjoying the way his eyes snagged on her lips. “After all we’ve done together, I think I’ve earned the right to call you by your name. You asked me to last night, remember? And to me, you areChristopher,a man I—I’m fond of and intimate with. A man who used to be a boy, a boy like my son, whom I love more than I can bear sometimes.”
The prowling beast in his eyes retreated, the fire banking into something more warm than scorching. His chin was directed at the column off to the right, his gaze darting about the familiar room. But it always landed on her, glancing off different parts of her, off the places where they touched.
“That boy, the one you used to be, he’s beneath all this, I know it. And he feels it all.” She pressed at the smooth chest beneath her, and felt some of the cold iron of his muscle melt beneath her hands. “His innocent hands are somewhere inside these scarred ones stained with blood.”
“I have killedso many,” he murmured. “Don’t you know that it’s too late for me? Don’t you realize that if there is anything but oblivion after this life, I am well and truly damned?”
“But wasn’t it Dickens who said ‘I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in this world.’ Look at this, Christopher.” She turned her gaze to encompass the shattered, splintered casualties of his rage strewn about the marble floor like fallen soldiers. “This is proof that, despite what you think, you have the ability to feel, and to do so is not always pleasant, I know, but it is necessary for human life. And we’realive,you and I. And because of it, there is hope. Hope and truth and the possibility of love. I believe they can pull you out of the mire, if you let them.”
He studied the carnage with the same dark look that Millie imagined the devil, himself, used to survey all the realms he lorded over. “You think—you think I live in a mire? One you can pull me out of?” His voice had calmed, his breathing slowed.
“I think you live in a shell,” she answered. “A grand, large, rather expensive shell of a house. But it’s no home, Christopher, it’s a place to live, but not what a person needs tofeelalive.”
His hands tightened over hers and she rushed on with the desperation of a general charging uphill and still gaining the high ground.
“You thought last night was a dream, and I believe there is some truth to that. I don’t think either of us dreamed that pleasure could be so intense, that our bodies would fit together so perfectly. That we wouldfeelso much. I enjoyed being beneath you, and I would do it again.”
“No. You won’t.” His face hardened and Millie could hear the crackle of the ice as it climbed and clawed its way back over his soul, engulfing the man beneath it. She was losing him.
“Christopher… wait,” she begged, as though they were racing, and he’d pulled too far ahead for her to see him anymore.
“You become my woman, what then? Who profits from the bargain?”
“I’m not asking for promises,” she amended. “It’s not a question of profit, it—”
He flung her hands off him and retreated to the door. “What do I have to offer you but corpses and shells?” His voice… his cold, cold voice, it had returned. It leached the warmth from the room, froze the heat of last night’s memories with the hard actuality of his violent life. Of the existence he’d carved for himself out of stone and ice. “I will give you the corpses of your enemies, of the ones who wish you and your son harm. But make no mistake, woman, I am not a man who can give you a life. For like this house, I am nothing but a shell. A walking corpse. And just because I didn’t kill you, doesn’t mean I won’t destroy you.” He turned to leave.
“Christopher.”
He paused, his hand on the door frame, but he didn’t turn to her.
“Please,look at me.” He couldn’t go. They couldn’t leave it like this.
His knuckles tightened on the door frame until they whitened, and still he never so much as glanced back. “Go have breakfast with your son, Millie,” he ordered tonelessly. “I have an appointment to kill his father.”
This time, she made no move to stop him.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
It was certainly surreal to enjoy delicious tea in such an elegant parlor when one’s lover was off killing your child’s father somewhere.
Millie found it impossible to focus on the lovely Lady Northwalk’s conversation, though she did try to smile into the woman’s disarming gray eyes and notice how well they matched the silver of her finely crafted chair.
People died every day, didn’t they? Someone was murdered in the city all the time. Innocent people, young people, the elderly, the helpless, they were all occasional victims. And people like her knew about it, felt sorry for it, and went about their own lives. Not because they were heartless, but because they didn’t know what else to do.
So why was she obsessing about the death of a man who’d ordered her own murder? Who posed a threat to her son? To hisownson. It made no sense, and yet she couldn’t escape this impending dread. This feeling that something very wrong was about to occur. She knew a crime was even now being committed, that someone who woke this morning and dressed and maybe enjoyed jam with his toast wouldn’t wake tomorrow to do so again.
Was this vengeance, murder, or justice? Were theycertainit was Lord Thurston who’d lured Agnes to her death? Of course it was, who else could it be? Who else would have profited from Jakub’s mother’s disappearance? His father. The man who stood to lose everything, including his barren wife’s entire fortune, were anyone to find out. He had to be disposed of, didn’t he? It was the only way she could ensure Jakub’s safety. She’d sell her soul to the devil for that boy.
And maybe, by sitting in this lovely room the color of Christopher’s eyes, she was signing the contract in blood.
