Page 26 of Greed: The Savage
He curled his lips into a cool, derisive, and deliberately jeering smile, though his gaze had already betrayed him, caught on the sharp tilt of her chin, the stubborn line of her mouth. “I am not happy with you, Addien.”
I am not happy with you.
Those weren’t the first time those words had been uttered to Addien.
They’d been a favorite of Mac Diggory, the gang leader she used to answer to, who’d made her suffer for even imagined slights, reserved for Addien.
This was, however, the first time that sentence strung together of six words were delivered in that smooth, affluent King’s English by a true Mayfair nobleman.
Whenever that declaration came, it’d been swiftly followed by a brutal backhand.
Addien shivered.
Or worse…
She had preferred the quick strikes. There wasn’t any slow, agonizing build of terror. It came. Then it went.
The ominous threats that hovered in the air were what left Addien with a real, soul-quaking fear.
This is not Mac Diggory. This is Malric Mauley, Marquess of Thornwick.
That calmed her…some.
“Tsk, Tsk, nothing to say,” Thornwick purred like the sleek panther ready to pounce.
Somehow, Addien found the ability to lift her shoulders in an insolent shrug.
Upon his sleek, calculated approach, Addien swallowed the fear in her throat.
The nerve endings in her feet and toes twitched with the animal-like intuition that urged a person to flee in the streets. It took everything within Addien to make herself as still as possible.
She’d been wrong.
When it came to rousing fear in a woman’s heart, Diggory had nothing on the Marquess of Thornwick.
Under the cruel reign of Mac Diggory, she’d found pride to be a paltry piece of nothing. The Earl of Dynevor taught Addien pride was all a person was actually born with that couldn’t be taken away—unless one let them take it from you.
That gave her the strength to look an enraged Marquess of Thornwick in the eyes.
“It doesn’t seem like I need to say anything. You came down here and interrupted my time. So, why don’t you do the talking?”
A primal emotion somewhere between fury and something else crossed his face. Something she’d seen and witnessed in the eyes of other men, but very rarely directed her way, which is why she suspected it was merely a flicker of the dim kitchen light. As if a fine toff like Malric, who kept company with fine ladies with creamy white skin and flawlessly manicured fingers and didn’t bother with the courtesans here at the Devil’s Den, would ever feel desire for someone like her. That realization, for some reason, only raised her annoyance and, strangely enough, not her relief.
It’s only the fact that he thinks he’s better than you. That’s the only reason you care one way or another.
Malric did not so much as crack a facial muscle. Instead, like the predator he was, he stalked her. Moving out from the other side of the table, he approached until he arrived at her side, and then like the king of the club himself, he straddled one leg over one side of her bench and seated himself, so he stared directly at her.
“What do you want?”
To his very small credit, he didn’t pretend he didn’t hear her.
“What do I want?” he arched a haughty dark eyebrow. “You believe I’m trying to limit you again?” He sounded amused at the prospect. “You don’t have anything I’d ever want. But before I leverage you any further, I don’t leverage people. People do what I say when I say it. You, Addien, did not do something as simple as following basic orders from Dynevor, who handed them to myself. And as such, you don’t serve a purpose here any longer.”
Her panic mounted. “What do you mean? I havedonemy assignment!”
She hated the pleading edge in her voice. She hated even more how as she spoke, the idea swept over her that she was desperate enough that she’d throw herself at him. At him. A merciless man. She caught herself before she gripped his shirt sleeves.
“I’ve done my job,” she said. This time with a steadier resolve.
