Page 63 of Greed: The Savage
“I know all manner of uses for it, Addien.” Thornwick let his thumb drift over the fragile skin of her wrist. Addien’s breath caught.
He hid his smile.
What began as a bid to distract himself from the urge to kill for the hurt done to her soon shifted—for reasons far more dangerous. Wicked, carnal ones.
His thumb lingered against her skin, tracing the delicate seam where wrist met hand. Beneath it, her pulse quickened—an unguarded confession. What strange magic did she possess that such an innocent, oft-overlooked part of a woman could stir such raw wanting in him?
“Do you know what Dynevor keeps an icehouse for?” he asked, his voice low, lifting his head just enough to catch her gaze from beneath hooded lids.
Addien’s nod was uneven. Was it shame at her ignorance…or the shiver his touch and question coaxed from that sweet, hidden place within her?
The rapid beat of her pulse gave him the truest answer.
Thornwick’s jaw tightened, his hunger for her winding deep, hot, and inexorable in his chest.
Ever so slowly, he wrapped an edge of the cloth around his finger. He dipped the material, leaving it there to soak on a slab of ice.
“Ice has countless aphrodisiacal properties,” he said thickly.
He brought the material back closer to the bruise he’d previously tended.
“Does it?” her voice trembled.
Thornwick nodded. “Oh, yes.”
Never taking his gaze from hers, he lifted her wrist, bringing it close to his mouth. As he pressed the cool cloth to her skin, his breath ghosted over it.
Addien’s breath hitched—not the hiss of a woman chilled by cold, but the sharp, burning catch of one seared by the mingling of ice and heat.
Thornwick hid a smile. He wanted her. He didn’t care to wonder why—only that no woman he’d ever desired had ever stirred him so fiercely. All he knew was hunger. An ache to possess her.
A proper gentleman might feel guilt for lusting after a woman who had defended herself against Dunworthy this very day. But Thornwick was no gentleman. He would have her—bent over a chair, beneath him, above him—in every way a man could take a woman. She’d be as much a hellion in his bed as she was in every other clash they’d had.
He’d have her on her bloody knees, begging for it.
The day was coming, and soon.
Oh, yes, he’d see to it.
Until he had slaked this lust, he would never command his thoughts again. Nor, God willing, would she.
Because until he claimed her, every waking thought belonged to her…and he meant to take them back the only way he knew how.
Chapter 16
In all her years, no one had ever looked after Addien following an attack. Every hurt she’d taken, she’d tended herself. That was how life on the streets worked. Nay—that was how survival worked. You got knocked down, you slunk off like a stray dog, found some corner in the shadows where no one could see, and set about tending your wounds.
And it was a day for firsts—because never before had she been stirred as she was now, by the touch of a man and the husky, seductive pull of his voice.
As Malric peered at her through thick, sooty lashes, he alternated between cooling her skin and breathing over the very place he touched. His breath, a hot, soothing tease, his words a suggestion, his voice a temptation. She ached between her thighs from the subtlest of touches.
The wolfish curl to his unforgivingly hard lips said he knew it too.
“You are beginning to see a hint of how ice can be used…” With that, his finger stretched for that frigid water that had literally stolen her breath and dipped his own hand within those icy depths, like he was testing hot bath waters to gauge its temperature, but giving no outward reaction as to the bite of those mercilessly frigid contents.
Even as her heart raced and that eager anticipation stirred in her cunny.
She still had enough control of her faculties to understand what he did here. It wasn’t hard to see that his was a ploy to distract her with desire so he didn’t have to discuss anything more meaningful than mindless sex.
