Page 11 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

Y esterday, he’d clearly laid out the terms Addien needed to follow to maintain employment here at the Devil’s Den.

The breathtakingly resolute young woman valued her life and position in equal measure. He admired that facet of Addien Killoran—her values resonated with his.

Given the principles which drove Addien, and the understanding they’d come to in the early morn hours, what Thornwick had not expected was to be kept waiting for a second morning in a row.

Or, for hell’s sake, he couldn’t bring himself to knock on her damned door and get her moving for the day.

Another young maid about her daily tasks went passing by and gave a curious look at finding him standing there.

And why shouldn’t she? Everyone knew the fastidious schedule he kept and the discipline he demanded of both himself and all those who answered to him at the Devil’s Den.

Then had come the damned intimate interlude between he and Addien five hours earlier.

Thornwick consulted his watch fob. Correction —seven hours earlier. He found himself jarred. Knocked sideways. Thrown off his axis.

Unmoored, as he’d never been.

And for what? A bloody conversation that hadn’t lasted more than thirty or so minutes, and she’d flipped him and his view of her on its ear.

This whole while he’d thought her a solitary, foul-tempered termagant, but she was neither of those things. She was resourceful, loyal. Selfless .

When she should be stealing sleep until the next unforgiving day came, she was busy sacrificing the handful of hours she had for herself. And what did Addien do instead?

Thornwick knocked his forehead silently against her door panel.

She taught women at the Devil’s Den to read. Read.

He’d entered into this assignment with her believing one thing, and he’d been so damned cocksure he knew every last detail about her.

He’d kept a list of her and all the employees’ schedules: when they woke, when they worked, when they were slated to rest. Who they kept company with.

Diligent notes made it easy to ferret out the staff’s efficiency, and to prevent theft and trouble within the club.

It turned out he didn’t know as much as he thought he did.

All those notes he relied upon hadn’t told him a damned thing after all about Addien Killoran.

It had been easier having dealings with Addien when she was an hour on Dynevor’s schedule.

It had been even easier when she’d been any other insubordinate who delighted in vexing Thornwick.

In the course of one night, she’d gone from a woman he’d been about to send packing to a newly unearthed mystery that made him hungry for more of her secrets.

Hungry for her secrets?

A newly unearthed mystery?

Bleary-eyed, he stared vacantly at a whorl upon the old oak panel. Worn thin from lack of sleep is what Thornwick was.

What did it matter if she’d risen in his esteem? He straightened.

If anything, he shouldn’t be shaken. He should be pleased he’d been paired for an assignment with a woman of shared character and qualities.

Fully restored, Thornwick drew himself up.

Raising the back of his hand, Thornwick rapped his knuckles along the center of the door’s panel and waited.

When there came no answering call, he grinned.

Given the late hour she’d been working last night, she was likely dead to the world. He’d save a lecture for another time.

“Wakey, wakey, Addien,” he called. Same as yesterday, but with none of the bite.

Silence rang in the corridor.

Restive, he pounded at the door. “Are you in there, Addien?”

If he’d learned nothing else yesterday, his fierce little minx deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Perhaps you require some assistance dressing.” He intended that as a jest based on their disastrous first start.

Want settled heavy in his veins. His breath came sharper, faster. To steady his hungering for the enthralling creature on the other side of the panel, he gripped her brass doorknob hard.

“Oi, Thornwick!”

Fuck.

Thornwick, caught flat-footed, turned.

Delilah smirked. “I can promise you, Thornwick, you’re the last person Addien wants to keep company with, let alone have dress her.”

Heat formed under his collar. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

It was a genuine question, one he really should know the answer to.

“You’re slipping, Thornwick. Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know everyone’s schedule?”

It appeared Delilah was of shared opinion.

Her retort lacked the sting and strength of a certain wild sprite who had him tied up in knots. He found himself curiously missing his usual sparring partner. Something in Delilah’s question reached him.

“…aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know everyone’s schedule…?”

Thornwick narrowed his eyes.

“Where is she?” he asked bluntly.

“Do you want me to do your work for you?” With a wintry laugh, Delilah sauntered off.

Thornwick frowned and considered the hall in both directions. He had already made a number of miscalculations where the minx was concerned. He’d arrived at faulty assumptions. With that belated discovery in mind, he considered the opposite place of where he’d expected to find her.

Cursing roundly, he turned quick on his heel. Of course, bloody hell. And only because he was alone and wasn’t in the unpredictable chit’s presence did he allow himself a wry grin.

Sure enough, as he made his way belowstairs, he heard her.

Thornwick slowed his steps. Or it sounded vaguely like her.

Those slightly smoky but definitively feminine tones of hers he recognized all too well. But never had he heard them… like this .

“It’s worse!”

Addien’s lamentations were followed by a loud, booming laugh. That deep rumble of amusement was nothing like the gravelly, ill-used, barely discernible expression of Thornwick’s limited mirth.

No, the man behind Addien’s sparkling laughter knew how to laugh, and make women laugh…

His fingers curled into loose fists at his side.

Correction.

He knew how to make Addien laugh.

Why did that distinction—

“There ain’t nothing you can’t do, Snap .”

Roy.

Roy, who, like Addien, had no surname that he either knew of or used. He was one of Dynevor’s, and subsequently Thornwick’s, best guards.

That’s who’d been laughing in that carefree way? Roy ? With a dark, angry personality to rival Thornwick’s, he’d never caught the fellow crack a grin, let alone a laugh.

“This, I can’t do,” she said, truthful in a way Thornwick had never heard her.

No, correction. Truthful in a way she’d never been with him.

There was a slight distinction between the two.

The very lightest. Thornwick wasn’t exactly sure what the distinction was, and he was too unbalanced to sort it all out.

“You aren’t giving yourself enough credit, Snap.”

Snap.

A muscle ticked in Thornwick’s cheeks.

What an irritating moniker. It was a name for a schoolroom child and not the Valkyrie who’d faced the devil Mac Diggory, and flown brighter and higher for her fight than any phoenix.

To him, she was and always would be Addien.

Those lyrical syllables joined together, he’d come to find, rather suited her.

Addien. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know much of anything.

Right now, Thornwick found himself discombobulated.

“Roy, there ain’t a prayer in a penny chapel I’m going to pass for a lady.”

His brows dipped another notch.

It appeared for all his observations, the chit did allow someone in.

This discovery set off an unknown, unfamiliar feeling in his gut. Something dark and raw and primal.

Only because there’s so much you don’t know about her . When you conducted such thorough research, this dark, unpleasant feeling was all a product of professional frustration with himself.

“This from the girl who taught me to read.”

She’d taught the guard to read? She’d failed to mention as much while she’d shared parts of herself.

The timbre of Roy’s voice changed. “Do…enjoy…”

Whatever Addien’s reply, it came stuttering and shy.

Thornwick gritted his teeth.

Bloody shy?

Addien.

Addien.

This was bloody enough!

The bloody guard had work to be doing at this hour, and instead he stood here flirting with Addien?

He’d bloody sack the bas—

“I don’t want to talk about me, and my assignment, and Thornwick anymore,” Addien muttered.

Good because she was done conversing with Roy. It mattered not that the sole reason she was doing so now was because Thorn had been late this time.

He took a step forward to announce himself.

“You have always been one of the girls here I can talk to so easily.”

Anger flashed behind his eyes. Going on and on with Addien instead of doing his work most certainly was a sack—

“I’ve got to ask you something, Snap,” Roy said.

“You can ask me anything, Roy.”

The eagerness and anticipation in Addien had turned her practiced English tones into the cockneys she often carried, but even more often concealed.

“I understand you’ve been teaching the girls how to read,” Roy said. “I admire that about you, Snap.”

Thornwick had been of the same opinion upon his discovery early this morning. As such, the tall scarred guard with his adulation shouldn’t have set his jaw into a full clench again.

“I’ve got a question for you about that,” Roy ventured this time with a gruff hesitancy.

This is where the bloody bastard asserted his interest in courting the bizarrely enthralling minx.

Thornwick stepped into the entrance of the kitchen and opened his mouth to announce himself. But Thornwick’s guard beat him to it.

“I know you’ve been giving lessons to the new girl, Magdalene, and I was wondering… That is, given you know me well, if you could speak to her for me and see if she might be interested in my suit.”

Thornwick regretted the fact that he’d stepped out of the shadows and into the scene the moment he did.

Because Thornwick had been very certain, absolutely so certain, that he wasn’t incapable of feeling any emotion. That was, emotions experienced by humans.

Then he caught sight of Addien’s stricken face.

Her pixie features were a taut reflection of heartbreak.

The sight of which alternately made him want to snarl and curse her for that response to Roy’s ridiculous rejection, and bloody pulverize his inferior himself for that slight.

Which, hell, he should be glad for. After all, he hadn’t wanted the gruff guard to be expressing an interest in—

The thought hadn’t even fully formed in his head and Thornwick’s mouth twisted with distaste.

Addien chose that unfortunate moment to spot him standing there.

Not taking his eyes off of Addien, Thornwick dropped his voice to a harsh, cold warning.

“If you want to keep your work here at the club, might I suggest you do actual work on the hours you’re scheduled, Roy.”

The reliable guard went flushed in the face. “Understood, my lord.”

Dismissing the bloody guard who’d had Addien in all smiles, Thornwick said nothing as the other man made a quick exit.

At last, he got what he wanted—Addien alone.