Page 46 of Greed: The Savage
“Hurt you,” he finished, the words softer than he’d intended.
His gaze locked on her. Her cheek, redder than he’d ever seen it, stood out in stark contrast to her olive-toned skin. Specks of blood dotted her gown and neck—details he hadn’t taken in during his march up to her.
Horror—and something that tasted dangerously like fear—closed his throat, leaving him only two words. “My God.”
With a small, puzzled dip of her brow, Addien followed his gaze.
She grunted. “Ain’t mine.”
A cold knot twisted in his gut, and then came the welcome heat of blistering, all-encompassing rage.
Some man had done this to her…
What other pain had Addien been made to suffer? The thought sank its claws into Thornwick, and from it dreadand rage bloomed black and lethal. The predator inside him uncoiled, pacing, demanding the scent so it could run the bastard to ground.
The only thing that kept him from snatching her close and whisking her off to some corner where no savage—except for him—could touch her was the deep, dark predator caged inside Thornwick, demanding the hunt.
Thornwick needed the man’s face. His name.
His last breath.
“Who?”
Addien gave him a strange look.
She felt unreal—some fever dream—slipping between the siren who tempted him, the spitfire who fought him, and now the woman someone had dared touch.
“Never mind,” he growled. “I do not require his name.”
I’ll find him my bloody self.
He’d turn over the treacherous baroness’s house until he did. With that, he took off at a canter. Someone would pay. And if that man didn’t come forward, then every last man who walked within those halls would die with Thornwick’s hands around their throats.
Stunned by Malric’s violent reaction to the sight of her, it took Addien a moment to gather her scattered wits.
Cursing roundly, she set off at a quick run after the sprinting Malric. She’d always been fast and nimble—a product of her size and her will to survive—but he could have challenged Mercury himself and not only won but been standing there waiting, alive and well, at the finish.
Breath burning her lungs, chest heaving, her side aching from the tumble she’d taken from the boxwood onto the gravel path, Addien slowed to a halt.
What in hell is wrong with me?
When he’d clapped eyes on her, he’d gone dead quiet; his bottomless black gaze flashing darker, hard with murderous fury.
She’d crossed ways with fellows itching for blood too many times to remember.
Then there had been Malric’s rage—dark and unbridled. It’d put terror in any cutthroat’s heart, but left awe in hers. Addien closed her eyes. She’d believed all that terrific fury reserved…for her, on account she’d never had a man stand as her protector. By hell, she’dpridedherself on not needing anyone’s safekeeping.
There was a difference between needing and wanting. She’d never known it—until now, in Lady Darrow’s perfectly kept, bloom-laden gardens.
She’d never pictured herself craving a man’s defense, but there it was. A bitter laugh scraped from her throat. Like a noddy got it into her head, Malric went to pepper a cove on her account.
She’dwantedto believe that, and so she had, but dreams were as fleeting as breaths taken.
Her gaze hooked on the doorway he’d disappeared through, and bitter memories of what he’d been doing while she’d been battling for her freedom pressed in.
Bitterness sat like vinegar on Addien’s tongue. While he’d been all warm and easy in his fine lady’s arms, she’d been cold and cornered.
Him having his fine time cut short and that alone accounted for Malric’s wrathful—
