Page 100 of Greed: The Savage
“My name is Snap,” she said again. “Snap Killoran.”
Something about this man made it important for her to keep up a barrier between them. Malric referred to her by the name she’d given herself. She, who’d been so inconsequential that MacDiggory, who’d named all his street rats, hadn’t even bothered with one for Addien because of how homely she was.
“You chose a different name for yourself. An apt one, perfectly suited you, Addien.” His rogue’s eyes gleamed with dangerous mirth, dazzling as every inch of him. “Do you know why that is?”
Addien hesitated. She didn’t. She wasn’t sure why she was curious, only that she was.
“You are a proud thing,” he murmured. “I will not make you beg…for an answer, that is.” The duke brushed his knuckles along her cheek—a whisper of a caress, so fleeting she might have imagined it. Delicate. Gentle. Nothing like Malric’s hard, possessive hold.
And yet the gentleness was its own kind of mastery, no less claiming for its softness.
“You chose a Welsh name to define you, and oh, how it does. It is mesmerizing, magnificent.” His murmur had a trance-like effect, one that she didn’t succumb to, but she could certainly see why other women did. “Like the Welsh hills from which you belong.”
His gaze held hers, magnetic and merciless, until she forgot how to look elsewhere.
“That’s why you stared so long at this painting,” he said, voice low and rough. “Because it called to you—because you long to go where it leads. Your name, Addien, means beauty. Fair. Fine. Which is why you are perfect for…”
She hadn’t realized she’d gone still, breath caught, waiting—until he finished.
“Myclub.”
The rakish glint in his eyes, the rogue’s grin curving his mouth, told her he knew exactly where her thoughts had strayed—and how close she’d come to believing him.
What he didn’t know, what he could never know or believe, was that his light touch might stir warmth, his silky tones might enthrall…but he was watered-down whiskey beside the Marquess of Thornwick’s finest French brandy. Malric, velvet at the edges, a deep burn beneath, tempting a woman to drink too much. Too long. Too deep.
“Oh, Addien. I am very much going to enjoy having you in my employ. Now, to determine just what work you are best suited for here,” he purred. “If you will join me for…refreshments, we’ll discuss my plans for you.”
Addien alternated her gaze between the doorway and the pretty tea table he gestured to.
With wooden movements, she took up a seat at the head of the Duke of Argyll’s table.
He settled himself across from her, his figure imposing and impressive.
In taking a seat at Satan’s table, she’d done it—she’d crossed a point of no return, a place she could never come back from. The Devil’s Den entered its final chapter in her life.
And Malric was forever outside her reach.
Why did that not bring the relief it ought?
Chapter 25
To reel beneath hopelessness and desperation, one must first be capable of feeling.
Thornwick did not suffer from that defect of character.
Or hehadn’t.
Yes, hopelessness was a stranger once; tonight it clung to him like a second skin.
Thornwick stood at the edges of an impenetrable fortress. A castle of brick and stucco, guarded not by knights of old but by the centurions of a new age: the polite palaces of peers, nobility descended from that ancient giant whose power still held sway.
The customary number of guards were stationed about the grounds and posted at every window of Forbidden Pleasures. Big men, hulking men, who looked out of place in a world crafted by noblemen for noblemen.
Thornwick knew them all. Their names, their stations, their breaks. He knew their placements—strategic and precise—the largest men at the front windows, where visibility would serve as deterrent to any fool who considered trespass into the playground where London’s most powerful peers came to sport.
He knew because once it had been his assignment: to learn every name, every hour kept, every meal and breath taken within the kingdoms of the Duke of Argyll, the Marquess of Rutherford, and Lord Severin Cadogan.
It was those unscalable walls that fed Thornwick’s all-consuming panic, freezing him where he stood.
