Page 74 of Greed: The Savage
He sat at Addien’s small, serviceable vanity, so unlike the grand vanity in his own suites. Without the benefit of a shaving blade, he put the boot knife he always kept on him to a different work. In a steady hand, Thornwick scraped the dagger, sharp enough to draw blood, along the day’s growth on his left cheek.
It was a task no nobleman dared do himself and always left to a valet’s skilled hand. But when he’d become buried in the secrets contained at the Home Office, he’d vowed no man or woman would come near his throat with a blade of any sort. He’d come to appreciate the quiet routine. It had a calming effect.
Or it had.
Thornwick’s gaze drifted over to where Addien slept.
He’d climbed out of bed twenty or so minutes earlier. The spirited siren lay deeply burrowed into the space made by his body, as if in sleep she searched him out. As if she needed him near.
Male satisfaction brought his lips twisting up.
Just then, Addien shifted restlessly. Her whispery-soft frame didn’t so much as rustle the bed linens.
His mouth compressed into a flat line.
That functional bedding also highlighted another gap. In Thornwick’s role at the Devil’s Den and the title to his name, he enjoyed all manner of luxuries, more than the provincial amenities Addienenjoyed.
A growl eased past his lips.
With a silent curse, he dipped his blade into the cloudy water, rinsed it clean, and set the blade to his other lathered cheek.
Satin sheets.
Addien Killoran, her body, belonged in a four-poster bed with the finest, luxuriant fabrics, not the functional fabric Dynevor’s club supplied to the lower staff.
My bed. Where no other man would dare lay a hand on her.
There came from Addien a murmuring of soft fragmented words he could not catch. Echoes of the way she’d whispered in her sleep all night while he’d watched her in repose.
This other new discovery touched something deep in Thornwick he hadn’t known was there. It was as though the firebrand who guarded her secrets so fiercely by day could only set them free in the dark, her voice baring what she would never share awake.
Thornwick’s name had eased like a sigh once or twice, letting him know he occupied her dream state.
A pure, male smile unfurled on his lips.
How could she not?
After he’d made love to her the first time, he’d carried her to the drawn bath and lowered her into those still steamy waters and played the role of her dutiful servant. Soaking her hair, washing those silky, untamed strands. Rinsing them. Upon completion, he’d carefully squeezed out excess water from the sheened fall, draping it over the edge of the tub. With a husky murmur, he’d urged her to shut her eyes. When she had, he’d lathered a cloth with a lavender-scented cake of soap and gently washed each and every part of her.
It was a role he’d not played for any woman, nor would again for anyone after her.
Only when he had tended every swath of her olive-hued skin did he bring the cloth tenderly between her thighs—to clean. To soothe.
Except her breath hitched—not with pain. She’d let her legs fall open, and he’d soothed her in another way, coaxing her to a third shattering release in the sudsy water.
The moment he’d joined her in that bath, sending water sloshing over the sides as he did, Addien insisted on bathing him. She herself washed the remnants of her virgin’s blood from his shaft—with that same cloth he’d used to both cleanse and pleasure her—before giving him an equally powerful climax.
A soft, husky moan drifted from the bed, threading into the morning quiet and mingling with the plink of water into the porcelain bowl. His breathing grew rough. Thornwick stilled his razor before he cut himself.
Even in full slumber, it seemed they were of one accord.
He still wrestled with the truth: until Thornwick, his passionate, insatiable Addien had never before taken a man to her bed—or her body.
And now she never would.
Satisfaction, pure and primal, stirred through Thornwick. His mouth and his mouth alone had explored every inch and hollow of her lithe, supple frame.
Whether it was desire, possession, or something between, it no longer mattered. He would have her for good.
