Were the chief inspector correct, who could the killer be? Crowley? Maybe. The old bastard had been in the profession so long, why not take on five contracts in two months? His liver probably wouldn’t hold long enough for them to send him to the gallows. Dorshaw? Argent had assumed he’d retired. At least, the police had lately stopped picking organs and such off the cobblestones. Perhaps the Algerian. Or the Prussian.
Maybe someone new stalked the streets. His streets.
Something he’d have to discuss with Blackwell. And if other mothers of young sons were being murdered around the city, did they have something to do with the lawyer, Gerald Dashforth? Was Argent’s own contract against Millie connected? It could be a coincidence. But coincidences were rare in the underworld. His world. He had a few minions watching Dashforth, and the few clients of his who could afford to hire Argent. So he intended to find out.
“Millie?”
Argent’s ears pricked at hearing her name, and it wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that paid attention.
“I’m getting overheated, are you ready for lunch?”
“I’m afraid I can’t lunch today. I’m going to fetch Jakub from school after this and take him with me to the theater.”
It was her voice, Argent decided. It … did something to him. Physically. Unlike most women, her voice took on a low resonance that carried—no—enthralled. To listen to her speak was like being chained, but sweetly. One couldn’t escape the rich vibrations, but why would one desire to do so? It conjured wicked curiosity. What would her moans of pleasure sound like? Her cries of release?
“It makes me anxious being away from my son even long enough to send him to school,” she was saying. “I know I’m being overprotective.”
She wasn’t. Someone wanted her dead, and maybe the boy, too.
“I don’t blame you.” A long, lean form stood and stretched in the sunlight. The moisture blurred her lines and angles, but Argent wasn’t interested in seeing a naked woman at the moment.
At least, not the golden-haired one.
“I’ll pick up something for you and Jakub to eat at Pierre’s,” the woman named Jane offered. “I’ll put it in your dressing room.”
“Thank you, dear.” The blonde bent to receive a kiss on each cheek from Millie, who was only a dark head above the pool of water from his vantage.
At the sight of Millie and her nude friend kissing, he had to brace a hand on the wall as his body surged to life and lust flared with an entirely new level of intensity.
Jane climbed out of the bath and retrieved a wrap and towel before padding toward the hall leading to the ladies’ dressing rooms.
She passed not three spans from him and didn’t even bat an eye.
Argent waited until she was gone to creep closer to his prey. He felt like a true predator. Hungry, impatient, but aware that waiting for the precise moment to strike made all the difference in capturing his quarry.
Millie’s delicate hands gathered long and heavy ebony hair over a shoulder slick with water and oils, uncovering the flesh of her bare back to him. When she shifted to scrub suds into the slick length, Argent caught sight of the two columns of sleek, small muscle that bracketed her spine.
Blood rushed right beneath his skin in an almost tangible race to his core. Once congregated there, it made a distinct journey south.
And then she stood.
For a moment he couldn’t draw breath. He opened his mouth and took a gulp of air, and drowned in humidity and desire instead.
Never in his life had Argent known that one could be paralyzed by lust. Up until the moment he saw her nude form, he’d always regarded sex as a biological imperative. Something he did because his cock wanted him to. Because it afforded release, pleasure.
One by one, his fingers curled into tight fists of need.
The droplets of water sluicing down the curves of her body and into the water took on a musical lament, melancholy as the rain. What moisture clung to her seemed to do so with desperation, reflecting the thin shafts of afternoon sunlight in such a way that the illumination transformed from gleam to a sparkle.
She was a creature of the sunlight. Where the bright illumination painted so many women with a sickly pallor, she wore it like a golden cloak, a sun-kissed warmth that embossed the rich warm tones in her dark hair.
When she bent to reach for the soap on the ledge, he almost tripped.
Three days. Argent gritted his teeth. Three days he’d prepared for this. He was a man of ultimate patience and discipline. He wasn’t brave, he was fearless. His will wasn’t strong, it was iron. He’d been burned, whipped, stabbed, and beaten without so much as a moan of pain.
So why did the sight of Millie LeCour’s glorious ass have him swallowing a whimper?
She sank back down just before his knees gave out.
Her ebony head disappeared beneath the water to rinse her hair, and Argent seized the moment. If he’d made any sound, the fact that her head was submerged would smother it.
But he didn’t.
This couldn’t go on. He had to end it. Now. Sweet or no, chains were chains, and Argent had long since promised he would never be imprisoned again. Not even by the velvet ropes of Millie LeCour.
The water barely made a ripple as he lowered himself into the bath, reached down, and pulled her naked, glistening body up from beneath the surface.
She came up fighting.
Gasping for breath, she made a wild swipe at his face. The force of it, combined with the water, actually stung.