Authors: Kerrigan Byrne
The gesture seemed so easy, so simple, and yet so incredibly out of character that Millie caught herself on a soft sigh.
Christopher Argent was truly an enigma. Empty house, empty eyes, empty heart … or so she’d thought.
But what if she was wrong about him? What if his heart was not so vacant as she’d initially assumed?
Intricate lanterns lit the hallways of his home, made ever wider by their lack of objets d’art, and only interrupted by thick, dark wood doors.
Welton paused at one on the left and opened it, sweeping a hand for them to step through. It became instantly obvious that he knew the visiting child would be male. Done in shades of green, the chamber couldn’t have been more of a contradiction to the rest of the house. Toys, models, books, and all manner of furniture surrounded the modestly sized bed like a besieging army.
“This was kind of you, Mr. Welton, but I don’t think we’ll by staying long enough to make all this worth your trouble.” Millie turned to the aging butler.
Welton sniffed, and looked down over his considerable nose. “Not at all, madam, it is my job to see to the needs of any guests under my master’s care.” Though his features were neither soft, nor friendly, Millie could swear that he winked at her.
“Well, that is appreciated.” Trailing Argent to the bed, she feared he’d trip on something or other, but her worry proved needless. She bent to pull the blankets back and looked on as he took care while settling Jakub beneath the counterpane.
The bed was more plush than she’d expected as she sat and began to undo the laces on her son’s shoes. Argent stood by and watched, his constant regard making her usually nimble fingers clumsy and slow.
“Why not leave the shoes?” he queried.
She looked at him askance. “I’m making him comfortable, and I don’t want his shoes to dirty the sheets.”
He nodded and waited until both boots were resting by the bed.
Standing, she began to divest Jakub’s tiny limp form from his jacket.
“Why make him comfortable, he’s already asleep?”
Exasperated, she stood, putting her fists on both hips. “Are you going to stand sentinel all night, or could you possibly allow me a moment with my son?”
His jaw clenched, and for a brief second, she worried he’d refuse.
“I could have lost him today,” she said more gently. “I just need a few minutes.”
As he glanced down at Jakub, his jaw worked to the side, then he nodded, shifting to one foot to move around her.
Millie’s sigh of relief was cut short by his giant hand gripping her upper arm with all the strength of an iron shackle. His eyes burned down at her, a molten flame melting the ice she’d begun to expect from his gaze.
She didn’t know now which she found more terrifying.
“Ten minutes.” His hand tightened, but then something flickered in his eyes and she caught what she could have called a wince before he released her. “Ten minutes and then you’re mine.” He swept to the doorway that Welton had vacated.
“I’m done waiting.”
Millie didn’t breathe until the door closed behind him.
Ten minutes
. She almost couldn’t consider it.
Her hand shook as she pulled the blanket up over her son, brushed a lock of his hair off his forehead, and watched those angelic eyes flutter behind closed lids. Good dreams, she hoped. Something that didn’t include this new world of theirs full of danger and assassins and the consequences of the past.
Ten minutes.
Or nine, now. As she looked down into the face of her precious boy, she knew it would take all the time he’d allotted her to prepare, but she’d do what she promised. The curve of his round cheek glowed in the soft light of the lantern, and as she pondered it, Millie found herself wondering about the man to whom she belonged for the night.
He’d mentioned a mother. A whore. But in the darkness of the carriage, she thought that she’d heard something like nostalgia lurking in his otherwise monotone voice. A man like Argent … It was easier to think he’d been birthed from a shadowy hell-mouth in some dark, forbidden place. Already a lethal, brutal man with no conscience. It was as if he’d been put together by something darker and infinitely more cruel than God. Like pieces were missing.
But that couldn’t be, could it?
Once he’d been small like the child in front of her. Helpless. Maybe even innocent.
Had he been born, as some were, with the desire to kill? With the urge to take a life? Or had he been created by some dastardly villain who shaped him into the man he was? What if his missing peices had been ripped away from him? What if his brutality, his proclivity for violence and bloodletting, reached into the bedchamber as well?
Tears pricked Millie’s eyes and she rapidly blinked them away, she couldn’t tell if they were tears of fear or of compassion, but she did know one thing. She hated to cry for no reason. Besides, these questions were useless, because in a matter of minutes, she’d know the answers.
I’m done waiting,
he’d said.
Well, she supposed they both were.
The consistent sting and burn of his stitching needle did not produce the effect Argent desired. Of course, the thread he kept on hand in the washroom pulled the sliced flesh of his forearm back together, but the pain did little to alleviate the erection abrading against his trousers. He couldn’t tell which discomfort irritated him more, the cut or his cock.
Since the slice was a defensive wound on the underside of his dominant forearm, he had to seek out the only mirror in his entire cavernous place and use his less dexterous hand to do the stitching, while trying to work backwards from the reflection in the glass.
His efforts at a clean stitch had been thwarted more than once, and he’d had to start over. In fact, he might be doing more damage to the skin than good. He hadn’t initially realized how long the gash was, though it wasn’t incredibly deep. The bandage had kept it from bleeding too much, but carrying the child had caused it to ooze.
Ten minutes.
Maybe he should have given her more time.
He’d divested himself of his bloodstained shirt and bade Welton bring him a clean bandage.
Welton set the supplies on the long bench built into the wall beneath the only washroom window. “If you’d allow me, Master Argent, I could stitch your wound in a jiffy,” he offered.
“I’m not in the habit of letting other people near me with sharp objects, even if it is only a needle.” Welton knew that, of course, but the man always offered.
“Very good, sir, but might I suggest you put on your clean shirt lest you frighten the lady.”
Brows drawing together, Argent considered it. Perhaps he should have been better prepared for this. For the first time in a score of years, he took a moment to truly study his reflection.
He really was an unsightly bastard. Though he knew his strong features could compel others at times, he was fairly certain his body would disgust them. His torso stood as a large chronicle of a life of abject, unceasing violence.
Argent flexed his shoulder and arm, smooth muscle rippling beneath a web of badly healed burns stretched over a body that had grown exponentially in height and girth since the wound had been inflicted.
While Welton unfolded the starched white shirt, this one loose and casual, Argent counted two bullet wounds, seven knife gashes, and he couldn’t even imagine what his back looked like. He’d once been wounded by a cattle prod a sadistic guard had brought to make the prisoners work harder.
That had been a terrible day. A terrible, blood-soaked day. He was pretty certain those scars still remained, though he’d never much cared to look.
What would Millie see when she encountered him like this? A killer? A protector? A coercer?
A lover?
A monster was more likely.
“I think you’re correct, Welton, I think I should like that shirt.”
It took some doing for the two of them to dress him and keep the shirt clean, but once he was buttoned into the garment, the right sleeve rolled up past his elbow, he resumed the tedious chore of stitching the flesh closed.
“I will be nearby if you or Miss LeCour have need of me,” Welton informed him, more inflection or meaning in his voice than Argent had ever before noted.
Brows drawn together in concentration, Argent nodded and was left alone.
Christ, but it was difficult to do anything requiring so much dexterity with the most insistent cockstand he’d ever had telling him the wound could wait.
The woman could not.
However, fucking a woman like Millie LeCour with a seeping gash in his arm seemed barbaric, even for him.
He somehow wanted to be certain that blood never once touched her perfect, porcelain skin. He had no qualms about bathing in it, but it should never touch a woman like her.
A mother. One who worried about things like shoes in the sheets and the comfort of a sleeping child. When he thought of the way she’d swept Jakub’s hair from his closed eyes with all the tenderness and love a woman could possess, a flutter of something soft and foreign pressed against his breastbone. Like a hummingbird was trapped there, looking for a way out.
And it was that little flutter beneath his ribs that made him catch his breath.
The washroom door creaked a little as it opened and Argent gritted his teeth. “Welton, hand me the vodka from the cupboard over there. I think this wound has been open too long. I don’t want it to turn septic.”
The cupboard door opened and closed while Argent cursed the unsteadiness of his hand as he made one of the stitches wider than it needed to be.
“It was
your
blood on the carpet in my dressing room, wasn’t it?”
Argent could count on one hand the number of times he’d been truly startled. Every time had resulted in pain, and this time was no exception, as he pulled too hard on the string stuck in his skin at the sound of Millie LeCour’s voice.
She held the bottle of vodka like sacrificial wine against her antiquated bead and velvet costume, and approached him like one would a wounded bear. “You’ve been hurt this whole time.”
Argent didn’t know how to respond, as the statement had sounded more like an accusation. Also, her hair had fallen from its net into a wreath of messy curls spilling over her breasts like an onyx waterfall. How the devil was he supposed to put words together when she looked like that?
He wanted her.
God
, how he wanted her.
A frown pulled at the corners of her red, red lips and she slipped by him to set the bottle on the window seat next to the clean bandages, which she pushed to the side.
Argent had paused to observe her, his arm only half stitched, wondering just what she planned to do next.
She sat. Looking up at him, she gestured to the space next to her. “You’re making a mess of your arm. Let me finish.”
He glanced at his handiwork in the mirror. Her observation was correct, the few stitches he’d been able to accomplish might as well have been done by a blind and simple child. He’d always doctored his own wounds. It was safer for a man like him not to show others his weaknesses.
“I’m nearly finished,” he hedged.
“You’ve only started,” she argued. “Now sit down, I know what I’m doing.”
It had been a lifetime, it seemed, since someone had dared argue with him, let alone issue an order. He stood for a moment, deciding what to do, and then, only because no alternative instantly presented itself, he stepped over to the window seat and lowered himself next to her. “How do you know what you’re doing?” he queried.
Millie turned to the bottle and retrieved one of the bandages, an air of efficiency that he hadn’t yet noted about her settled on her features. “I’ve two elder brothers and a younger one. Someone always needed stitching in my home.”
“Where are they now?” he asked. More startled than she was, he expected, by his curiosity about her.
A frown touched her eyes that made him sorry he’d asked.
“Two of them immigrated to America, and my eldest brother and I … we’re not close.”
“Why not?” he asked alertly.
Tipping the bottle to moisten the cloth, she set it down and reached for his arm.
A shock of sensation bloomed over his entire body when her fingers found his skin and cupped his arm in her small, gentle hand.
Argent was a man used to holding still. Used to waiting silently for his prey to step into his trap. But this time, he froze for an altogether different reason.
Like a seasoned hunter, he could feel the hesitant anxiety within her, and knew that though she ventured close, any sudden movement or harsh word would send her skittering for safety. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had reached for him with something other than the intent to harm.
And, though she was about to inflict pain on him, the pleasure of the gentle press of her fingers as she steadied his arm surpassed any anticipation he’d had thus far.
“This is going to burn,” she warned, avoiding the question.
“I know.” He’d irrigated deeper wounds than this with alcohol. He was quite familiar with the teeth-clenching pain of it.
Stretching the wet cloth over her fingers, she was the one to wince when she dabbed it on the cut. But to him, the searing sting did something it had never done before, singed its way down to his already turgid erection. Tightening it. Flexing it.
Argent bit down against a wave of lust so strong he had to swallow a groan.
Setting the cloth aside, she took the needle from him, her fingers grazing his, almost intertwining, and he had to stop himself from grabbing her hand. Holding it. Threading her fingers through his until—
“I’m going to do my best to be gentle. I know you men tend to fear stitching needles more than bullets.” With a slight smile, she exerted a negligible amount of pressure in order to make the two edges of the flesh come together before she quickly but elegantly pressed the needle through them both.
“I don’t fear stitching needles. I’m rather used to them.” He’d meant the words to encourage her, but he could tell by the way her frown deepened, they’d had the opposite effect.