Two down.
What was it about Millie, specifically, that differed from all the rest?
Was it a question of simple chemistry? An unfulfilled lust as primal and animalistic as what happened in this pit?
God knew his body became instantly hard the moment their skin made contact. Hell, he was thickening now just at the thought of it. Touching her was electric. Potent.
And dangerous.
Kissing her … well, that defied description. It was more excruciating than any torture. More exquisite than any memory.
Millie LeCour overflowed with life, with enthusiasm, with emotion and warmth, and while their skin was connected, all that somehow transferred into him.
And for a precious instant he could … feel it.
How was that possible? How did a woman, reportedly a thief, a blackmailer, a greedy social climber with a heart as cold as his, have such a profound effect? The woman he’d seen so selflessly and desperately protecting her child didn’t match the accounts of the woman he’d been hired to murder.
Was her love for the boy in earnest? Was she such a consummate actress that she fooled even him? His mother had been a criminal, a thief, and a whore, and still she’d loved Christopher to distraction. In fact, many cold-blooded killers, criminals, and warmongers were family oriented.
It was their weakness. One he’d often exploited during the Underworld War he and Dorian Blackwell had started against the criminal element of London more than a decade ago.
Argent didn’t like unanswered questions. Didn’t want unknown variables. And at the very least, he couldn’t have Miss LeCour going to the police with his description. He’d never left a witness before, and he and Blackwell had already become too familiar with Chief Inspector Morley in recent years to risk it.
The gasp of the crowd and the gleam of metal warned him to roll away, dodging a knife in the spine. Gaining his feet just in time for the Spaniard to charge at him, knife first, Argent used one arm to lever the inside of the man’s elbow and the other to push the Spaniard’s knife hand toward his own chest.
And so it was decided, Argent thought with satisfaction as the blade, which could have been sharper in his opinion, pierced the chest of the struggling, screaming Spaniard and drove in to the hilt. Dropping the bleeding man, Argent walked to the door of the steps leading out of the pit, which opened upon his approach. The crowd parted for him, and he left the cacophony behind, struck with a singular purpose.
He’d retrieve his winnings later.
What he needed were answers to the many questions tumbling around the flawless form Millie LeCour.
He had to see her again, and this time there must be absolution. He had to logically and objectively analyze this power she had over him. And this time, once he understood the stakes, he’d make the final decision. He’d either kill her …
Or claim her.
CHAPTER SIX
“An assassin?” Jane asked, reclining into the salt bath with a blissful sigh. “Are you certain that the chief inspector isn’t making more of this than is necessary? We’ve all had our share of overzealous pursuers. And you said, yourself, he’d done nothing but break into your apartments and kiss you.”
The steaming water caused Millie to take a few shallow breaths before she could finally settle herself into the bathing pool with a great exhale. “I also found that particularly strange about the attack,” she agreed. “He had his arm around my neck as though he planned to strangle me, but he just … stood there … holding me against him.” Millie tried not to think of the warm, hard body belonging to those cold, cold eyes. It upset her. It upset her because she should have been more upset about the entire ordeal. But sometimes the memory conjured heat, and that distressed the most.
Jane cast her a sympathetic look through the gathering steam. “You must have been terrified, you poor dear.”
“I was,” she admitted, pulling the pins from her hair and letting it tumble into the bath. “When I thought he might hurt Jakub, I nearly came out of my own skin. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill him. I believe I would have if he’d laid a hand on my son.”
But he hadn’t. He’d disappeared again.
“And then he just … kissed you?” Jane wrinkled her pert nose. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”
“None at all.”
“Well, you know you’ve really made it to the top when those touched-in-the-head admirers break into your house to steal a kiss.” Jane had a way of making light of everything, even the horrible. It was how she kept such a sunny smile in a dark world. “Do you still have those two monsters following you and Jakub around?”
She referred, of course, to the guards Millie had hired for Jakub and herself the morning after the attack. Large Irish brothers with a preponderance of shoulders and little neck to speak of. McGivney, their last name was, and they smelled as frightful as they looked. Which added to their effectiveness, Millie decided. They came highly recommended, and Jakub liked that they stood still enough to let him draw them.
“Mr. McGivney is stationed at the entrance to the bathhouse,” Millie admitted. “And his brother is with Jakub at school. I had to charm the headmaster in order for him to allow it.”
It’d been three days now, three performances gone by, three sleepless yet uneventful nights had passed, and Millie had finally begun to feel safe again.
That was, until she’d been summoned to Scotland Yard this afternoon to talk to Chief Inspector Carlton Morley.