Page 42 of Greed: The Savage
Which may also have been intentional.
Refusing to give credence to the possibility at this moment, Addien gingerly got herself up into a seated position.
Like a sound carried a distance by the wind, she picked up a flurry of curses above her and looked towards them. His jaw flapping like a fish who’d just got hooked, the viscount hung far over the windowsill, gaping down at Addien.
If Addien could get air into her lungs, she’d have cautioned the toff about not leaning too much farther and taking a topple.
Not that she cared if he met his demise this day. No, she’d be delighted to see him sail through those same fine windows he’d sent her fleeing through and right onto his neck.
Rather because if he landed wrong, he’d come right down on her. Being a ward of Diggory—as he’d called her—Addien used to contemplate the worst ways to die.
Being crushed to death by Lady Darrow’s brother found itself somewhere in the top three of her unwritten list.
Finally, with her senses sorted out and her breathing back to normal, Addien got to her feet.
She set to searching for her slippers. “Viscount Dunworthy,” she muttered as she fetched first one and then the other ridiculous shoe from the boxwoods. “More like theViscuntofDungworthy.” She shouted those crude curses at him, and then in a final act of defiance for the day—one that’d cost Addien her work if she hadn’t done so already—she spat in Lord Dunworthy’s direction.
Giddy with her triumph this day, Addien did a little turn about.
Malric would have questions about where she’d went, but he would understand. She grinned. In fact, he’d probably admire the way she’d handled the perfumed jackanapes. He—
Addien’s thoughts died.
Along with some other part of her she couldn’t identify or name.
Strangely numb, she peered up at the windows overlooking the westward grounds.
Addien’s belly muscles spasmed.
Her chest hurt.
Her heart ached.
All of her did.
Malric had the baroness on his lap and looked about ready for some rough and ready.
Addien bit the inside of her cheek hard.
That’s what he’d been up to, then. That’s why he’d been oh so eager to have his time alone with the baroness and ordered Addien stay put like a dutiful lass.
Steeling her heart, Addien railed at herself for caring.
Chapter 12
Only a eunuch or a madman would sit disinterested while a voluptuous widow loosened her stays and bared her cream-white breasts. The baroness abandoned pretense, offering herself—and even proposing herself as his future duchess, with the condition he ignore her perfidies. That he could have tolerated.
What he could not tolerate washer. He was no eunuch, yet entirely unmoved as she cupped her breasts and toyed with her nipples. What stirred him wasn’t the flesh before him, but the memory of Addien’s lithe limbs mounting the carriage.
“You are thinking about it…” the lady was saying. “You are thinking about all the things we could do together, and I’m not afraid to give you a taste. You won’t run after having had me. You will beg for more.”
Bloody hell. What was wrong with him?
She swayed over, breasts in his face. Any other day, he’d be hard, hungry, ready to take her.
Now? Nothing.
If he was weak here, he was weak everywhere. The thought curdled in his gut.
