Page 12 of Greed: The Savage
Addien had to tell her brain to tell her feet to move.
HadMalricjust chided her for referring to herself as a street rat? Surely not. That didn’t make sense. None of this did. Likely, that’d been his intention.
As of right now, Addien was sure of justonething.
She’d never wanted a promotion at the Devil’s Den.
But after finding herself caught in a place between caution and curiosity over Malric, her next advancement,anythingthat would get her away from the Marquess of Thornwick, couldn’t come fast enough.
Chapter 4
Thornwick and the wide-hipped, deep-bosomed baroness, Lady Sybelle Darrow, engaged in what any passersby by the west window would take for a polite morning call.
Alternately, it would require someone to be seated in the same sun-washed parlor overlooking the baroness’s verdant and fastidiously tended gardens to know the true nature of their discussion.
Any polite lord or lady would be objectively horrified by the scandalous exchange unfolding. Granted, there wasn’t a single respectable member of High Society who’d step foot inside the baroness’s residence—which made her the ideal bride.
“I long for…”
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
For the dozenth or so time, Thornwick, seated at a rosewood table with a floral porcelain tea service between him and the baroness, glanced towards that faint rustling.
The scratchy disturbance also, for the dozenth or so time, interrupted Baroness Darrow as she gave a testimony of her reasons for wanting to take part in the virgin auction.
“I long for…” she repeated. The widow’s big lips, painted bright red, formed a pout so severe it leant an ugliness to her otherwise pretty countenance.
“You long for the forbidden,” he supplied on a silken hum, mollifying the wicked widow enough for her to continue prattling about her natural desire for unnatural proclivities.
Restless beyond measure, unbidden his gaze slid to the silent servant in the corner. That would be silent, if it were not for the occasional and very pronouncedscratch-scratch-scratchof Addien fidgeting with her cloak and the gown she wore underneath.
While the coy baroness droned on, Thornwick kept up his study of Addien.
She’d refused to surrender the finely woven cloak to Lady Darrow’s butler.
There was a gown underneath, wasn’t there? Zounds, he both hoped so and wished not.
In fact, she’d put up quite the fight, one filled with cockney curses for the baroness’s strapping butler and even more threats when the fellow made the mistake of trying to take the garment off her.
Addien came alive in that instant, snapping and spitting and hissing, and giving life to the nickname Dynevor affixed on the minx.
“…touch it one more time, and I’ll form a noose and choke you with it, butler…”Addien had spat.
Thornwick had been both suitably infuriated by her wild ways—and dangerously aroused by them. Even now, the blood in his veins thickened in remembrance of her feisty display.
He’d wanted to bend the volatile chit over his knee.
Ultimately, before Thornwick brought the chit and melee to order, the baroness had raced to the foyer in an unfavorable start to his and Addien’s first appointment together.
Now, with nothing more than Lady Darrow’s tiresome coquetry, Thornwick gave leave to the fantasy of Addien. What was underneath the cloak that’d led Addien to put up such a resistance at being separated from the garment?
What did she wear underneath that cloak?
Or what didn’t she wear?
On the wing of that scintillating question came a host of rogue’s possibilities.
“I must confess, I do not prefer to be taken roughly,” the baroness explained in the same blasé way she’d shared her tea preference moments earlier.
