Page 68 of Greed: The Savage
“Suffering.” He repeated the word without inflection, which was somehow more dangerous than when he seethed in rage.
She forced herself to nod. Only then did he draw back, and her heart at last slowed its frantic beat.
“The thing about suffering, Addien,” he said almost lightly, selecting from the bowl an ice cube melted to a mere shard, “is that it wears many faces.”
“I am aware,” she replied, though her voice shook as he lowered the ice to the tender skin at her wrist.
“In truth, some even take pleasure in it.”
This time she did not hide her mirth, letting a soft snort escape.
He clicked his tongue. “How certain you are of what you know—and how little, in fact, you do?”
“And how have you suffered?” she asked. “I have told you of mine.”
“All this talk of suffering, as though it is a thing only to be feared.” Something dark slid into his tone, a dangerous whisper in the air between them.
Retreat was impossible; she was caught.
“It is,” she said before she could stop herself.
He smiled—smug, knowing. This was the other face of the Marquess of Thornwick: primal, condescending, and infuriatingly certain.
She should despise it more than she ached for it.
“You have not been properly taught—by any man—before me.” A shiver chased down her spine at the promise in his voice, a promise that compelled as much as it unsettled.
She fought to muster indifference, self-command—anything other than this breathless awareness.
“Again?” he purred.
“We never began.”
“This ice, for instance,” he murmured, inching the cube closer to her skin, “it can wound, as when I first touched you with it. But…”
The cold bit into her flesh and her breath hissed between her teeth. “Bleedin’ hell. There is nothing pleasurable about—” She broke off as he shifted the cube aside and breathed warmly over her chilled skin. The contrast sent her pulse racing and her breath ragged.
His smile told her he knew the effect he was having. He traced the ice along her arm, then bent to lick the droplets from her skin. Her breath caught, her eyes fluttered shut. She meant to tell him to stop, for this was not longing—it was a calculated distraction meant to make her forget what he had revealed. But when she opened her mouth, only a soft, betraying moan escaped.
He chuckled, sliding the cube along her neck before chasing it with his breath. Heat pooled low in her belly, shame and yearning warring within her.
“You see,” he murmured, “ice soothes bruises…but it is far more diverting in the throes of lovemaking.” His lips moved with the words, brushing her over-sensitized skin in what might have been an unintentional kiss—if anything with Malric could be unintentional.
“S-stop,” she managed at last, stumbling over the word.
He stilled, mouth close to her ear, body tense.
“I know what you are on about,” she breathed.
“Do you?” he whispered. “And what is that?”
“Distracting me,” she replied, her voice as breathless as his thumb was sure upon her collarbone.
And God help her, she wished it was more.
Chapter 17
For all her brilliance, quick wits, and cunning, Addien Killoran had not the faintest notion. She had no idea how fiercely he desired her—how many hours Thornwick had spent imagining the ways he might take her. There was but a hair’s breadth between loathing and the kind of mind-ravaging, obsessive, burning-hot desire that consumed him.
