Page 15 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

Addien didn’t waste her efforts with a knee. Most men anticipated a knee to the groin. As he swooped his mouth down to close in on hers, she angled her head and sank her teeth into the place where his skin was exposed just above his cravat and just shy of his jugular.

Her efforts had the intended effect.

The viscount released a blood-curdling cry and immediately lost his hold on her.

Blood spurted from the place where she’d bitten him and quickly saturated his previously immaculate cravat.

Nor did Addien make the same mistake again and waste her time with doors that had been deliberately locked by the baroness’ servants, which only indicated the noblewoman was in collusion with Addien’s assailant.

“Bloody bitch,” the viscount said. “Do you truly believe you’re not here because Dynevor is selling his girls when they’re out on assignment?”

With the peer halfway across the room, she whipped around. “No!” she hissed.

It made no sense to do anything but look for a way out. And so she resumed her flight around the room, grabbing door after door and coming up empty with all of them locked.

“Dynevor would never,” she shouted.

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Are you so sure?” the viscount jeered. He’d finally gotten the bleeding under control and given that he knew what she’d just discovered—there was no way out—he moved at a sedate pace to get to her.

Addien wasn’t so sure of anything in life. The only two certainties were birth and then death. Everything in between was a question mark and gamble.

Worrying about whether or not her employer had done her the greatest wrong, Addien turned her focus to the windows. Yanking open the curtains, she did a quick scan below and only half attended to the viscount, and then only enough to ascertain that he wouldn’t catch her unawares again.

“No, the whole reason you are here is to keep me occupied while my sister has her turn with Thornwick.”

A vice squeezed at her insides at what certainly sounded as though it could be a plausible business expansion for Dynevor. Was she being tortured here while Malric had his jollies with the maddeningly beautiful, beyond compare baroness?

A poisonous viper who also happened to be sister of this snake garbed in the guise of a gentleman. Given their matching cruel temperaments, how could Addien have failed to see the connection before now?

“Come, Miss Killoran,” Lord Dunworthy inveigled. “I merely want a little taste, nothing more.”

“Nothing more?” she murmured.

He nodded, looking like an eager child about to palm a peppermint.

“Well, unfortunately for you, my lord, there’s nothing I want less .”

Angry color turned his dough-white skin a purplish shade of red.

The unholy glitter in the viscount’s eyes revealed his excitement. She knew his sort. He wanted a fight.

His fleshy mouth formed a pout better suited to a lady’s lips. Addien wondered whether brother and sister had practiced those expressions together in a mirror.

“What else will you do while the baroness enjoys a fine time with Thornwick? They are well-matched. Neither of them has any shortage of vigor.” A haze of lust glazed the twisted nob’s eyes.

“They’ll make an afternoon of it.” The timbre in his voice dipped.

“He’ll do her like a dog.” His breathing grew increasingly ragged and she knew a depraved vision of his sister and Thornwick together invaded his thoughts. Crazed lust danced in his eyes.

With the viscount beside himself, Addien used the opportunity to scour the grounds below and plot her way out.

“And while they enjoy themselves, Miss Killoran,” he panted. “I can knock you about.”

The unceasing jealousy that’d battered her at the thought of Malric and the baroness found its breaking point. At Lord Dunworthy’s proposal, Addien nearly gagged on the bile in her throat.

Somehow, she found the wherewithal to speak in clear warning tones. “My lord, I have no interest in being knocked about by you or any man.”

Anger filled his eyes. “Is denying me really worth losing your work at Dynevor’s?”

“Dynevor keeps the girls in his employ safe.” She would not believe what Dunworthy said regarding the earl.

“Oh, come,” Amusement penetrated the viscount’s fury. “You are one of Dynevor’s pity hires—the strays he brings in from the streets.”

That rankled. Addien refused to let him see he’d gotten to her. “I’m good at my work and His Lordship recognizes that.”

“ His Lordship also sent you here for me to enjoy.”

Addien made herself laugh in Lord Dunworthy’s face.

The dandy’s skin mottled. “Say what you will, Miss Killoran—you are far too plain to be one of Dynevor’s prized girls.

But for those of us with a taste for guttersnipes, you’ll do.

And given your,” He regarded her with the cool hauteur of a man surveying vermin.

“ illustrious roots, you know better than most—a ring once sanctioned by Dynevor’s predecessors.

Men of rank, taking their pleasure in the shadows, for a price. ”

His words iced her veins.

And curse her traitorous heart for wanting Malric—not to vanquish Dunworthy, but to drag her from this gilded hell.

He was elsewhere, at his sport, while she bled with envy and despair.

“Now, Miss Killoran,” Dunworthy said, “as we’ve put that aside, shall w— what are you doing ?”

She unhooked the double windows.

The pernicious nob gaped. “Are you mad?”

“No,” she said with a calm that further raised the heat in his eyes. She was desperate. Desperation drove people, especially women, to do mad things. “If I welcomed your advances, Lord Dunworthy, then I’d be mad.”

The viscount made a grab for Addien.

She hitched her skirts up and hefted herself over the ledge.

By her assessment, the drop from the window was a scant six feet, and yet the speed with which Addien dropped and the manner in which her belly fell as she sailed toward the ground seemed to somehow both stretch forever and end in a flash.

She landed in an awkward heap among the baroness’s meticulously-manicured boxwoods. Its dense foliage lessened the impact, but did not stop Addien from finishing the fall onto the graveled garden pathway.

“ Oomph .”

By the force with which all the air exploded from her lungs, Addien may as well have taken another one of the viscount’s blows to her belly.

Addien rolled onto her back and instantly regretted the painful price of her sudden movement. All her muscles screamed their protest, and she groaned.

I’ve gone rusty. She used to jump from nearly double this height and landed like an agile cat on her feet every time.

Addien closed her eyes. It was the bloody skirts. Lawds, how she hated these fine dresses Dynevor made her don. He might as well have sent her out weaponless into the streets.

Which, as a matter of fact, he had.

Which may also have been intentional.

Refusing to give credence to the possibility at this moment, Addien gingerly got herself up into a seated position.

Like a sound carried a distance by the wind, she picked up a flurry of curses above her and looked towards them. His jaw flapping like a fish who’d just got hooked, the viscount hung far over the windowsill, gaping down at Addien.

If Addien could get air into her lungs, she’d have cautioned the toff about not leaning too much farther and taking a topple.

Not that she cared if he met his demise this day. No, she’d be delighted to see him sail through those same fine windows he’d sent her fleeing through and right onto his neck.

Rather because if he landed wrong, he’d come right down on her. Being a ward of Diggory—as he’d called her—Addien used to contemplate the worst ways to die.

Being crushed to death by Lady Darrow’s brother found itself somewhere in the top three of her unwritten list.

Finally, with her senses sorted out and her breathing back to normal, Addien got to her feet.

She set to searching for her slippers. “Viscount Dunworthy,” she muttered as she fetched first one and then the other ridiculous shoe from the boxwoods.

“More like the Viscunt of Dungworthy .” She shouted those crude curses at him, and then in a final act of defiance for the day—one that’d cost Addien her work if she hadn’t done so already—she spat in Lord Dunworthy’s direction.

Giddy with her triumph this day, Addien did a little turn about.

Malric would have questions about where she’d went, but he would understand. She grinned. In fact, he’d probably admire the way she’d handled the perfumed jackanapes. He—

Addien’s thoughts died.

Along with some other part of her she couldn’t identify or name.

Strangely numb, she peered up at the windows overlooking the westward grounds.

Addien’s belly muscles spasmed.

Her chest hurt.

Her heart ached.

All of her did.

Malric had the baroness on his lap and looked about ready for some rough and ready.

Addien bit the inside of her cheek hard.

That’s what he’d been up to, then. That’s why he’d been oh so eager to have his time alone with the baroness and ordered Addien stay put like a dutiful lass.

Steeling her heart, Addien railed at herself for caring.