He never should have given in to desire. Because now the softness of her lips haunted his every moment. The warmth of her mouth suffused him until need and lust twisted and ached within his very core.
She’d wanted him. He couldn’t let that go.
She’d been panting and open, soft and willing. No woman had done anything to or for him unless money had changed hands. No one had cared to. In his world, one didn’t get swept away by passion. No one crept into dark nooks to share sighs and pleasure and flesh. Someone like him might be lurking in the shadows. And money mitigated the risk.
But that night, on the eve of her greatest stage triumph, Millie LeCour, London’s darling, considered the most beautiful woman in the empire and beyond. She’d desired him.
Well, she’d desired Bentley Drummle.
But it had been sweet, unbearably sweet to think that for that moment in the dark it was Christopher Argent, not Bentley Drummle, that she’d begged to kiss her. A shackleborn bastard. A man who’d once been a weak boy. A boy who’d been beaten, raped, whipped, stabbed, starved, and terrorized. A boy who’d lost his humanity in a dank cell surrounded by blood. By the blood of the last human being who’d cared whether he’d lived or died.
He’d lived. To spite them all, he’d lived. And in order to do so he’d given his life to the spilling of blood. At first for vengeance, then for survival, and finally for profit. Under the careful tutelage of Wu Ping, he’d learned to kill a man before he’d learned to lace a boot.
It was all he knew. All he was good at. And never in his life had he questioned his place, never looked back into the abyss of the past. Never thought of that pathetic, powerless boy he’d once been.
Or of that night he’d lost his soul.
Until her. Until Millie had begged for her son’s life. Until she’d submitted to his demands in order to survive, because life meant enough to her that she would not only suffer the indignity of lying with him, she’d overcome it. She’d not only endure, as he did now. As he’d always done. She’d thrive. He knew this about her intrinsically. He had a feeling that, as strong and pitiless as he could be, even the ruthless Christopher Argent couldn’t snuff out her light. Certainly, he could kill her. But her light would remain in the glow of the lamps on every stage she’d ever graced. In the smile of her son, secure in the knowledge of her love. It would live on in the many portraits and photos of her.
Millie LeCour was immortal.
And for one night in his wretched life, she was going to belong to him.
He couldn’t fucking believe it.
Curling his wounded fist, he stepped into London’s heavy afternoon foot traffic and angled west, toward Mayfair. He had one more place to go. One more loose end to tie up before he returned to claim what was his.
CHAPTER NINE
Of all the employees of the New London Metropolitan Police currently housed at Scotland Yard, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley was Dorian Blackwell’s least favorite. No, that was putting it lightly.
He despised the man.
It could have been, he supposed, because Morley had made it his personal mission to bring Dorian down and throw him back into the hellish prison in which he’d already spent so many, many years. It could have been because of all the coppers on the force, Morley was the hardest to outwit.
But mostly, Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More’s intense repugnance for the man stemmed from the fact that, to his knowledge, Morley was the only other man on the planet who’d kissed his wife. Of course, they hadn’t been married at the time. In fact, Farah had been a longtime clerk at Scotland Yard, and had yet to meet Dorian. But the very moment after she’d said good night on that fateful evening three years ago, Dorian had swept her away to Ben More Castle, his Highland keep, and promptly forced her to marry him.
Farah was his. Of that he had no doubt. From her white-blond ringlets to her ridiculously tiny feet. Her body, her heart, and her soul belonged to him. And his heart, black as it was, always had been and always would be at her mercy. His body was hers to command and only hers to touch. And his life was dedicated to filling her every need, serving her every whim, and being the source of her every smile.
So when Farah’s angelic gray eyes lit with a warm fondness as she handed a cup of tea to Morley in his parlor, Blackwell had to clutch at one of the silk pillows on the couch to refrain from picking up the china teapot, throwing the scalding water into Morley’s handsome face, and shattering the blasted thing over his head.
But this room, with its French paper and velvet-upholstered furniture, wasn’t the dank stone walls of Newgate. And in such a room, a man like the Blackheart of Ben More resorted to other means by which to show possession and disdain.
Besides, Farah would be cross if he ruined the soft blue carpets with the blood of her former employer.
“It’s been too long, Inspector Morley.” Farah settled in the ornate pale silver chair stationed between the two men like a referee in a fighting match. Except here, each man was dressed impeccably and faced each other from identical long couches.
Dorian sat back, arms splayed, his leg over one knee, eye patch covering his weak eye against the dimness of the fading light filtering in through the large windows. “I say not long enough,” he murmured, and took a sip of his own tea to avoid the sharp look from his wife.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” she asked sweetly.
Morley perched on the edge of the opposite couch and leaned forward to put his teacup on the table in front of them. “This visit is more business than pleasure, I’m afraid. I’ve come to talk to your husband about a few of his … associates.”