Page 44 of Seducing a Stranger

Chapter 9

Morley didn’t think his wife was dangerous solely because he wanted her. She was dangerous because he wanted to believe her.

He emerged from the underground tunnels into Whitechapel, searching for trouble. Aching for it. His muscles rippled beneath his skin. Ready. Oh, so ready. He felt hot and cold all at once. He needed to hit something. To maim. To pound.

Fucking unfortunate word, that.

Also…relevant.

He’d wanted to pound intohereverything he’d denied himself for the past three months. To thrust and thrust and thrust until he lost himself to the bliss he knew he’d find in her body.

What harm could it do now?

She’d almost seemed like she’d wanted it. Hadn’t she? No.No. Surely, he’d imagined the expectation in her eyes.

The invitation.

Leaving her like that, with her dress half hanging off her shoulders, was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done.God!Just uncovering her neck to the top of her corset—the mere sight of her shoulder blades had driven him mad with lust.

For a stranger. For a possible murderer.

For his wife.

He was a beast on a short leash tonight.His wedding night.He’d used every ounce of civility he could feign on this difficult, exhausting day and now he could set free his wrath on the dregs of the city. Tonight, he was on the hunt for a singular criminal. A particular crime.

And he knew just where to find it.

He passed plenty of illegal acts. Bordellos, gambling hells, gin peddlers, thieves, and all sorts up to every kind of sin.

This was his genesis, and might very well be his end. This putrid place where the shadows were full of danger and the pallid streetlamps only illuminated unpleasant truths. He slid between them like a cat, avoiding detection as even desperate, waifish fiends and daring prostitutes shrank from his shade.

He heard the name whispered behind his back upon occasion.

Is that him? The Knight of Shadows?

The police beat was easy to avoid, he’d been doing it for decades. He knew their routes, and their times.

Hell, he knew most of their names.

What he needed to discover, was which ones sold cocaine to the innocent and weak.

The deeper he drove himself into the squalid darkness of Dorset Street, the more layers of himself peeled away. He shucked off Carlton Morley. His stringent mannerisms and his staunch courteousness. He even yearned to be rid of the ridiculous mask and moniker of the vigilante.

Tonight, he felt like someone else. Someone he thought he’d buried long ago.

Cutter.

As he lurked through the thoroughfares he’d once owned as Cutter ‘Deadeye’ Morley, he felt a piece of his puzzle click into place.

For three bloody months he’d been turning a problem over in his mind, chewing it with as much success as he would a rock. Breaking against it. Grinding himself down.

Who was the man who’d made the ballocks decision to fuck a stranger in a garden?

Carlton Morley? Or the Knight of Shadows?

He’d needed to come here to find the answer.

It all made perfect sense now. He’d been so visceral that night. So raw and filled with every emotion he’d never allowed himself. Anger and lust and need and pain. He’d been so fucking hungry. Hungry for a kind of sustenance he’d never had.