The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

Whenever Millie couldn’t sleep, she tiptoed to Jakub’s bed and snuggled with him for a moment. She reveled in the little-boy smell of soap and sweat with the slight chemical tinge of the paint permanently stained to his hands.

Perching her candle on the bedside table, Millie lifted the long, thin wrapper she’d brought from home, and rested her hip on the bed before leaning over him. He slept on his back with his mouth agape, and she pressed a finger to the bottom of his jaw to shut it before kissing his downy cheek and taking a moment to stroke his hair a few times.

A bath had soothed her aches and cleaned away any remnants of the day, and brushing her hair out and braiding it by a crackling fire had made her pleasantly drowsy.

However, the moment she’d crawled into bed, she’d come alive. Her body was tired. Exhausted, really. But her thoughts tumbled over themselves like a litter of unruly puppies. The events of the past few days revisited her. Some intriguing, some troubling. Some repulsive and some titillating.

Lord Thurston, Jakub’s father, and his dour-faced wife, Katherine. Poor Mena St. Vincent and her awful husband. The encompassing fear she’d faced when a white-faced stagehand had told her someone had attacked her son.

The sweet relief of holding him in her arms.

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.

“Millie?”

Her name was a groan of supplication on his lips. He was breathing so fast, as if he’d run the span of the city.

“Yes? I mean, no! I mean—you said my name … so I answered. Not … yes to the…”

“You said my name,” he whispered, grinding against her with a long, sleepy movement of his hips. “I want you to say it again. I want you to answer the question.”

“Q-question?” An uncomfortable ache stirred to life between her legs, feeding her fear and, at the same time, distracting her from it. What question? Oh, he’d asked if she wanted to fu—er, to make love to him.

Might they have earlier, if they were not interrupted? She’d been asking herself that very question all evening.

He dropped his mouth to her ear, his cheek pressing against hers, the beginnings of a beard abrading her skin. She’d been wrong about the moisture at his temples and hairline. It wasn’t sweat, but the fragrant dampness of a recent bath. He smelled clean, but his words were anything but. “I asked you if you came in here looking for another fuck? A better fuck. A longer fuck.”

She should say no. And yet, after she’d nearly seduced him this afternoon, how could there have been a question left in either of their minds?

“You were … dreaming,” she stated lamely.

“I am dreaming,” he said against her hair, his lips rooting until they found the shell of her ear, the curve of her neck.

“I … I came to wake you.” Dear God, what was happening? She bloomed like a tea rose beneath him. Pink and vibrant. Her breasts felt swollen where they were crushed against his chest, and she had to rock her hips away from where his sex dug against hers because it was just too much. Too big. Too … enticing.

“If you wake me, I’ll kill you.” The threat poured from his lips like honey over jagged shards of ice. The knife made a heavy thunk as he embedded it somewhere in the wall and she could breathe again. That was until he replaced it with his lips at the soft, sensitive hollow at her throat.

“You had a nightmare,” she explained, bringing her hands up to press ineffectually at his heavy chest.

“I’ve lived every possible nightmare.” His tongue was hot velvet against the hollow between her ear and her jaw. “But I know this is a dream.”

“How—” Her breath hitched as his teeth nipped at the place where her neck met her shoulder, sending warm chills that turned her bones to liquid. “How do you know?”

“Because I’ve had this dream every night since I met you.” His lips trailed over her jaw, her chin, her clavicle. His anger had turned to hunger, and Millie could feel it building. “And sometimes it becomes its own nightmare.”

“What … h-happens?” Millie ventured, understanding that he truly believed himself still asleep. And he truly might kill her if she woke him.

“I have you beneath me.” His voice was dark, darker than the absolute night within this room. “Which would never happen while I was awake.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. Not here.” His hands came alive, falling to the curve of her waist. “I tell you to stop me, to push me away. I tell you to run from me. I tell you I am nothing for you but death and blood.”

“And … what do I do?” What should she do? She should run, while she still could. If he would still let her. But somehow his weight had turned from crushing to delicious. And his mouth left little trails of pleasure in their wake.

“If it’s a nightmare you scream and you run in fear. You lock me in here alone for an eternity. If it’s a dream, you kiss me, and we fuck.”

Every time he said that word, her sex clenched on an aching emptiness that she didn’t understand. She wished he’d stop.

She wished he’d say it again.

He laved the lobe of her other ear and a warm, wet rush between her legs had her biting her lip to keep from groaning.

“You feel so real, because I’ve been inside you. Because I know the warmth of your skin, and the scent of you.” He pulled back, his body tightening into that signature stillness of his, coiled to strike. “Which is it to be tonight, Millie? A dream, or a nightmare?”

Not allowing herself another thought, Millie seized his shoulders and pulled him down to her lips. She couldn’t be the cause of a nightmare. Not for him, who had lived so many.

His groan was lost in her mouth, and Millie somehow wrapped herself around him like he was her anchor in the darkness. Her fingers barely met around the width of him, but her legs … oh, her legs could wrap around his lean hips and lock him against her, against that place that throbbed in such a way she thought she might go mad.

Despite his words, his dreamlike exploration didn’t last. She may have initiated this kiss, but she was a fool if she thought she’d control it. Not only that, but she hadn’t been prepared for it, for the pure blistering intensity of it. His lips were hard, yet full. His movements raw and unapologetically carnal. He kissed her with a wicked mouth, one that issued threats and vulgarities and brutal, albeit sometimes endearing, honesty. He kissed like a man unused to kissing. No artfully applied maneuvers or sensual variations. He kissed like a man about to—to fuck. Like he wanted to pour himself into her, or perhaps crawl inside of her. This was a dominant kiss. A shameless kiss. The kiss of a man who knew his sins and granted himself absolution.

This was the kiss of a killer.

So many anxieties and alarms clamored about in her restless mind, and with every sweep of his velvet tongue, with every grind of his pressing hips, they became quieter and farther away until only their two panting, clinging bodies were left in the close and intimate darkness.

Millie thought they may have lost themselves at this moment. Perhaps she’d ceased being who she was and he left himself somewhere else. They were no longer actress and assassin. Mother and hunter. They were man and woman. They existed for this moment. In this kiss. And if either of them breached, they would both cease to be.

Or perhaps find themselves and remember why this was wrong.

If this was his dream, Millie also never wanted to wake. She felt safe here, in the hold of a dangerous man. How could that be? Why did she trust him so?

Over her gown, his big hands found her breasts and engulfed them. She could feel the roughness of his palms through the thin fabric. The calluses brushed her hardened nipples and drew a soft sound of surprise and appreciation from her throat.

Her palms smoothed down the muscled ridges of his shoulders, testing their width. The webbing of his scars softened her heart, enough that she lifted her lips and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

He tensed and made a sound she couldn’t identify. Encouragement or censure, she couldn’t tell until he spoke. “Don’t be kind to me,” he ordered roughly, and tore her nightgown down the front. “I don’t know what to do when you’re kind.”

He bent to claim her breasts with his mouth. His hands lifted and molded them as his tongue circled the buds until her entire body felt like it was burning. His licks turned to nips, and then tugs, drawing small whimpers from her throat. She writhed against his touch. The darkness fueled her boldness, hid her blushes, and intensified every sensation.

She’d never considered how lovely it would feel to lie beneath a man. To cradle something so warm and large was shockingly tantalizing. A pose as eternal as time, itself, but in that moment Millie felt as though she were experiencing something unique.

His rough chin scratched at the soft valley between her breasts, and she stiffened when she realized his mouth was drifting lower, leaving her upper half completely exposed.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Your scent on my body, on my hands, drove me mad with hunger,” he said against the plane of her quivering belly. “Once I bathed I wanted it back. I want to taste you until you say my name.”

Dear sweet Lord, she couldn’t let him do that. It was too wicked. God, who was this man? Where was her terse assassin? Where was the man who bent her over and took her with her clothes left on? The one who’d pleasured her in the ballroom earlier and then pushed her away and disappeared? Who knew that in his dreams he was so utterly sexual? That he could set her blood to burning and mortify her at the same time?

Those rough palms pushed her legs apart, making room for his broad shoulders.

“Wait,” she breathed, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and suddenly very self-conscious.

“No.” His teeth nipped at the thin, sensitive skin inside her thigh as his finger split through the wet folds, coating him with her slick desire.

She bucked at the sensation as it branded its way through her blood. His other hand reached around her thigh and pressed her abdomen down, holding her hostage for his pleasure.

“I love you like this. Spread open and wet for me,” he confessed roughly. “I wanted you like this … I just can’t—” He broke off, silent for a tense moment.

Can’t what?

His finger slipped inside her and her entire body heaved beneath the sweetness of it. All breath left her lungs in a pleasured rush.

“Just like I remember,” he murmured against her thigh. “Soft … tight … drenched.”

Untried muscles clenched involuntarily around his finger and he let out a soft curse.

“Sorry,” she gasped.

“Don’t ever apologize to me…” he said tightly, eliciting a breathy sound when he withdrew his finger, and joined it with another. They didn’t slide inside her easily, but pushed, their way somewhat eased by the slick moisture there.

“So tight,” he growled. “You were so fucking tight … Christ.”

She couldn’t speak, only gasp and whimper as his fingers worked their way out of her before plunging back in again. She felt tight, and aching.

To her ultimate disappointment, he pulled his fingers from her and she whimpered her displeasure.

“I could taste you every night,” he moaned.

Sweet Jesus, had he just licked the fingers that—

“I need to taste more of you, Millie.” He pressed her thighs wider with his shoulders. “I need it all.”

His mouth descended, latched onto the exact place she’d felt raw and aching. The contact seared her so abruptly she cried out and contracted. His tongue was a warm weight splitting up the center of her sex, his fingers sank to the knuckle and stroked her from inside.

The darkness exploded into lightning, becoming a white flash that surged through her body on a raw cry. She felt shattered by bliss, beaten with pleasure. It surged through her in brief, intense surges that had her hips lifting against his restraining hand, shoving at it, and then retracting from it.

Even when the storm passed he didn’t pull away. His tongue replaced his fingers, a wet and shallow thrust inside of her, drawing out every drop of her release in audible swallows.

Collapsing to the mattress, Millie stared up into the darkness, too amazed, too pleasured to be astonished by his wickedness. She closed her eyes, feeling the soft glide of his tongue on her hot flesh, feeling pressure building again, enjoying the vibration of his moan against her newly sensitized skin. Then he captured the soft protuberance with his mouth. Sucking, then flicking, then tugging.

And again she went flying. Riding his mouth like she would a wild beast, her shoulders peeling off the floor, her cries echoing off the ceiling. This time she flew too high, the pleasure turned into a burn, and she made a wild grab for his hair, yanking until he detached on a snarl.

“I’m not finished with you.” He strained against her grip.

“I can take no more,” she said, panting. “Please.”

Her limbs felt like pudding, soft and weak. Her lids heavy.

“Is it always like that?” she asked softly. “In your dreams.”

“You’ve never tasted so good.”

“Is it like that with every lover?” she wondered aloud.

“I’ll kill any other man who gives you pleasure,” he said savagely, then paused for a handful of audible breaths.

“What is it?” she crooned, reaching down to thread her fingers in the silky thickness of his hair, his face turned to press against her, his lashes closing against her wrist.

“I don’t want this to be over,” he told the darkness. “I don’t want to wake.”

His lips brushed against her thigh. His kiss was more of a nuzzle that melted what was left of her heart. “No man has ever fucked you.” Possessiveness underscored his gentle tone. “I wonder if anyone has touched you, if they’ve tasted you. If you’re truly, only mine.”

“I am,” she whispered, and the veracity of those words struck her with an astounding force, and she stilled.

He crawled up her body in a slow prowl. Slowly, tentatively he lowered himself over her, pressing her breasts back into his chest, and shuddering as his erection slid against her open thighs. She opened trembling legs wider, accommodating for his bulk settling atop her. He was warmer than before, and she sensed a hesitation beneath the hunger.

“In my dreams I am a beast.” He sounded hollow and she wondered how he could in such a lovely moment. “I hold you beneath me. So you can’t escape.”

A bit of cold air hit the heat between her thighs, producing a shiver. “I won’t stop you,” she said, stifling a yawn of pleasured drowsiness. He felt heavy and warm, like a blanket of desire and sex. He could stay there all night if he wished and she wouldn’t complain one bit.

*   *   *

Captured in a bittersweet battle between consuming desire and profound regret, Christopher plunged his arms beneath his dream-lover and buried his face against her hair, knowing it was as inky as the night surrounding him.

He knew how this dream ended. A seductive fantasy that brought him to the brink, and then he woke on a tortured groan with his cock in his hand. Spilling his seed in a hollow parody of the bliss that everything building up to it had promised.

He hated that moment. Hated everything about it. About himself.

The dream had never been this good.

And it never would be again.

“I’m sorry I hurt you last night, when I took you.” He gave the words to dream Millie that he could never say to her in the daylight. She knew, didn’t she? She knew that he’d not meant to hurt her. That he didn’t know she’d been a virgin. That for all the lives he’d taken and the carnage he’d wrought, the sight of her blood made him feel sick and panicky.

The fingers threaded through his hair stroked softly, came to the edge of his scalp and circled back to his hairline to run through the same path.

He’d loved when she’d yanked it earlier. It nearly made him come. But this … this was different. Better, almost. It turned his lust from a bite to an ache. As insistent and demanding but less … savage somehow. For a man who was born in hell, that singular touch was sweeter than the idea of heaven.

“I want you,” he confessed. “I want you like this … beneath me.”

“Then I’m yours.” She lifted her hips, pressing the wetness of her sex against him in a gesture so infinitely sweet, it nearly unstitched him.

Rolling his hips, he found her opening and gently slipped the head of his shaft inside of her heat, sheathing himself inch by aching inch. She was as tight as he remembered, but nothing tore this time, nothing barricaded his way.

She gasped and the sound did something delicious to his chest. It swelled somehow, expanded.

“Ohhh.” Her elegant hands feathered over his back. “That’s so … much.”

“Too much?” Had he hurt her? Even here, even in his dream, he didn’t think he could go through that again.

“Don’t … stop,” she cried between heavy breaths.

He didn’t think he could. Blood poured the fires of lust through every nerve, and if he pulled away now, it would surely kill him. It was her fault. She was too sweet, too soft. She was everything a fantasy should be, and somehow more.

He glided back and drove forward again, reveling in her small sounds of pleasure. Only in a dream could something feel this right. Could the icy void become a warm, velvety sheath. A cradle of silken flesh and soft murmurs. Only in a dream could he rediscover what wonder felt like.

He gave himself to her in deep, slow thrusts. Lost part of himself with each stroke. Something came alive inside him, grew, glowed, and pulsed. He wanted to shrink from it, from the pressure, from the pleasure, but he was a man of pure primal lust now. Made of nothing but carnal instinct. Her little, high mewls drove him forward until it was not enough. It was never enough. It would never be enough. Desperate to get deeper, he slipped one of her legs over his shoulder, angling himself so deep that he thought he felt her womb.

Her sob touched him as deeply as he penetrated her. Soft hips spread beneath him in sweet feminine submission.

“Come for me,” he demanded on long, almost punishing thrusts. “Say my name … One … more … time.”

“Christopher.” His name was ripped from deep in her throat. “Please.” A plea or a prayer, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. She whimpered, then screamed. Her body clenched around his cock, bore down on him with a throbbing pressure so intense, he couldn’t fight it.

He closed his eyes, battling the ecstasy building in his abdomen and preparing to burst from him. He clung to the moment, held as long as he could.

Now he would wake. Now he would lose her—

Hot release spilled through him and he gasped his disbelief as his breath expelled along with his seed. He couldn’t draw air back into his lungs. Could do nothing but jerk and strain as every muscle clenched, held prisoner by pleasure. Consumed by sheer unadulterated bliss. It pulsed from him, poured from him, bathing her womb with warmth and further easing his last desperate thrusts.

The tempest passed as abruptly as it had hit him, and in its wake left a crushing destruction. Horror turned his blood to ice, even as the heat of lust still sang through him.

“You’re … still here.” He stood, the wetness of his manhood against his thigh an awful cold burst of reality.

“Where else would I be?” He could hear the confusion mingling with something else in her voice that made it husky and thick. It sickened him. Regret? Fear? Pain?

Christ. The things he’d said to her. The things they’d just done …

She’d been—she was—beneath him. She’d shivered when he settled above her.

He’d held her down …

Fuck.

“Christopher?”

He stumbled blindly toward the door, kicking it open and making his way on weak legs down the dim hall. He was running. Running from the darkness. From the lily-white woman of his dreams.

From the fantasy that had quickly become a nightmare.