Page 40 of Greed: The Savage
Fighting to drag air into her lungs, Addien also fought to collect herself.
“I am a gentleman, and you will treat me as such,” he rasped against her ear.
Addien grew desperate for a breath.
Funny, for her earlier assessment of his size and stature, but now his ruthlessness changed his profile. Still, she’d faced far worse threats and been handled by even more dangerous men. She’d survived and escaped Diggory and lived to spit on his memory. It’d be a cool, breezy day in Hell before some nob laid her low.
With her panic in check, Addien breathed. She continued to move away from him; this time, she didn’t bother with careful steps but moved at a quick clip. She’d underestimated the threat he posed. She knew better than to make the same mistake twice.
“Given you are maintaining that you are a gentleman, might I then suggest, my lord, you begin acting as such.” Her governess-like rebuke had barely left her lips when the gentleman backhanded her across the face. The force of that unexpected blow sent her reeling backwards, painfully and violently, into the bucolic pastoral landscape painted upon the wall.
“Christ.” Addien flexed her jaw. It had been so bloody long since she’d taken a blow. She’d gotten weak if this man, a fellow with a feminine build and soft hand, could knock her wits around with only one hit.
Her chest heaving, Addien remained collapsed against the wall, borrowing support.
“You stupid slut,” he hurled. “I am Viscount Dunworthy, and you are nothing.” With that, he gripped her sharply by the arm and drew her to him. Her chest collided with his padded one.
“Now, let me have a taste,” he mocked.
The hell she would.
Addien didn’t waste her efforts with a knee. Most men anticipated a knee to the groin. As he swooped his mouth down to close in on hers, she angled her head and sank her teeth into the place where his skin was exposed just above his cravat and just shy of his jugular.
Her efforts had the intended effect.
The viscount released a blood-curdling cry and immediately lost his hold on her. Blood spurted from the place where she’d bitten him and quickly saturated his previously immaculate cravat. Nor did Addien make the same mistake again and waste her time with doors that had been deliberately locked by thebaroness’ servants, which only indicated the noblewoman was in collusion with Addien’s assailant.
“Bloody bitch,” the viscount said. “Do you truly believe you’re not here because Dynevor is selling his girls when they’re out on assignment?”
With the peer halfway across the room, she whipped around. “No!” she hissed.
It made no sense to do anything but look for a way out. And so she resumed her flight around the room, grabbing door after door and coming up empty with all of them locked.
“Dynevor would never,” she shouted.
He wouldn’t.He wouldn’t.
“Are you so sure?” the viscount jeered. He’d finally gotten the bleeding under control and given that he knew what she’d just discovered—there was no way out—he moved at a sedate pace to get to her.
Addien wasn’t so sure of anything in life. The only two certainties were birth and then death. Everything in between was a question mark and gamble.
Worrying about whether or not her employer had done her the greatest wrong, Addien turned her focus to the windows. Yanking open the curtains, she did a quick scan below and only half attended to the viscount, and then only enough to ascertain that he wouldn’t catch her unawares again.
“No, the whole reason you are here is to keep me occupied while my sister has her turn with Thornwick.”
A vice squeezed at her insides at what certainly sounded as though it could be a plausible business expansion for Dynevor. Was she being tortured here while Malric had his jollies with the maddeningly beautiful, beyond compare baroness?
A poisonous viper who also happened to be sister of this snake garbed in the guise of a gentleman. Given their matchingcruel temperaments, how could Addien have failed to see the connection before now?
“Come, Miss Killoran,” Lord Dunworthy inveigled. “I merely want a little taste, nothing more.”
“Nothing more?” she murmured.
He nodded, looking like an eager child about to palm a peppermint.
“Well, unfortunately for you, my lord, there’s nothing I wantless.”
Angry color turned his dough-white skin a purplish shade of red.
