Page 16 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

O nly a eunuch or a madman would sit disinterested while a voluptuous widow loosened her stays and bared her cream-white breasts.

The baroness abandoned pretense, offering herself—and even proposing herself as his future duchess, with the condition he ignore her perfidies. That he could have tolerated.

What he could not tolerate was her . He was no eunuch, yet entirely unmoved as she cupped her breasts and toyed with her nipples. What stirred him wasn’t the flesh before him, but the memory of Addien’s lithe limbs mounting the carriage.

“You are thinking about it…” the lady was saying. “You are thinking about all the things we could do together, and I’m not afraid to give you a taste. You won’t run after having had me. You will beg for more.”

Bloody hell. What was wrong with him?

She swayed over, breasts in his face. Any other day, he’d be hard, hungry, ready to take her.

Now? Nothing.

If he was weak here, he was weak everywhere. The thought curdled in his gut.

“Do not fight it, Thornwick,” the baroness cajoled. “Do not be so honorable.”

This had nothing to do with honor. Her lack of such is what had put her at the top of his wife column.

She raised her big breasts to his mouth.

When his cock refused to rise, he damned himself to perdition.

Lady Sybelle’s frustration flared. “Go on, you stubborn man. Give them a taste. Suck them.”

Her shrewish tone killed what little chance she had.

“Lady Darrow, you mistake my purpose here.”

“No, I haven’t! You’re being difficult.” She lunged, fingers grasping for his limp cock.

He caught her hand in a hard grip.

“My duty is to Dynevor,” he said, voice like steel. “What do you suppose the earl would say if I were rutting you instead of conducting his business?”

“I forgot how you are all business, my lord.” She giggled.

God, even that grated.

She placed her lips next to his ear and whispered, “You Home Office man, you.”

Resentment took root in his gut. With her mention of his former work, any chance—and there’d already been next to none—of his body appropriately responding to her advances were now firmly doomed.

Thornwick gripped her by the waist in a punishing grip. The hungry widow, however, took his rough handling as the invitation it wasn’t.

“Finally,” she rasped.

She seized his hands and forced them to her breasts.

Reflex made his fingers twitch, but there was no hunger in it. Once, he might have gloried in such heavy flesh. Now it only wearied him.

His mind, damn it, betrayed him. Not Lady Sybelle’s lush curves but Addien’s smaller, stubborn swells filled his thoughts—her defiant glare if he so much as brushed her.

Heat flared low, treacherous, and he despised himself for it.

The baroness moaned, convinced she had stirred him. Let her. He knew the truth: it was Addien who plagued him, Addien who poisoned every thought, every—Devil, take him—weakness.

“Yes,” she hissed.

That brittle voice brought him careening back to the present. This time, the impatient widow snaked those clever fingers between his legs and gripped him hard.

A sharp hiss of air slipped from between his teeth. As he closed his eyes and fought for self-control, he continued to see Addien. The headstrong sprite who was tart-mouthed, proud, loyal, and brutal with her honesty; she would be just as spirited in bed.

Even more so.

His breath came fast in his ears.

“Take me now, Thornwick, please,” she panted. “I beg you.”

Addien would never plead. Just as it wasn’t Addien who touched him. Oh, but how I’d relish teaching her to beg.

Lady Darrow wasn’t the real-in-every-way woman he craved, nor the lady he’d join himself in marriage to.

He couldn’t. Even if the flaunting jade was just the right pick for a bride to drive the duke to an apoplexy, Thornwick couldn’t wed, touch, or stomach the sight of her.

Not after he’d witnessed her treatment of Addien.

Writhing and grinding on his lap, the widow was nothing more than a vapid, strumpet in silks.

“Lady Darrow, I am not interested in what you are offering.” Thornwick let his words fall like the verdict they were.

She giggled and squirmed on his lap.

“Oh, you like to deny me, you wicked man. You are such a tease.” She leaned in and whispered into his ear, “It is fine. I am good for any game.”

“This is not a game,” he said, infusing ice into his steely tones. “I do not play games. Not in life, not in bedsport, not in work, not in anything.”

That managed to cool the woman’s ardor.

“Well.” She pushed her lower lip out in a practiced pout. “I simply have to work harder.” Her eyes glittered with a violent lust, indicating just how much she welcomed that challenge.

Silently cursing again, he made to forcibly remove the baroness from his lap when his gaze collided with a figure in the gardens below.

Thornwick blinked slowly.

Christ, he’d had a moment of dread that he’d become as disinterested as a eunuch, until thoughts of Addien brought him to a full cockstand.

Now, he feared he was going stark, raving mad, headed to bedlam faster than King George should have been, by none other than the woman he was seeing everywhere.

Addien ?

Not just any Addien. Thornwick stared, trying to make the picture in front of him match the woman he knew.

Addien, with her slippers in hand and her hair in a loose, shimmering waterfall that hung about a waist he could span with his hands, taking a jaunt in Lady Darrow’s perfumed gardens.

“What in hell…?” he breathed.

As if she felt Thornwick watching and hated him for it, Addien turned back.

Her stricken gaze collided with his.

And he realized what she saw, and what she was likely thinking right now. The time alone he’d granted the baroness hadn’t a thing to do with club business, but instead had been driven by his desire to fuck the wanton widow.

Even with the gulf between them, the force of Addien’s antipathy reached back to Thornwick.

Addien’s gaze cut sharp, as it always did. In those violet depths, hate and resentment gleamed—the kind she always saved for him.

How was it possible from this far away to feel Addien’s disappointment ?

Thornwick stood so quickly, the widow tumbled to the floor with a thump so loud Addien surely heard it from where she stood. She’d already given him a last, disgusted look and marched off.

She’d formed her opinion. Fine . Let her believe what she would.

Except, it wasn’t fine.

Sprinting from the room, Thornwick set out to intercept Addien.

By the time he managed to catch up with her, she’d nearly reached the stable yards, which was ideal as it happened to be where their conveyance was kept. The faster they could leave this place, the better off he’d be.

“Miss Killoran,” he barked, marching more quickly. He was nearly upon her. “Stop this instant.”

Even as he issued that very formal, very gentlemanly delivered directive, he caught Addien’s derisive snort.

Yes, that was right. She’d certainly never respect or respond to that.

“If you don’t want to be sacked, I suggest you turn your arse around, Addien.”

It was a cruel tool to employ and yet the only one Thornwick possessed that he knew would make her halt in her tracks.

She stopped. But she did not face him.

Finding his grounding and strength in her compliance, he strode along the graveled path, kicking up stone and rock as he went.

The stable lads and gardeners bustling about spared him a look, and though they were not his staff, they clearly recognized a man who commanded space and wisely quit the courtyard, leaving him and Addien alone.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded when he’d reached her.

“I think it should be as clear as what you were doin’ just now with the baroness, Malric.”

Heat scorched his cheeks, chased by something sharp and unwanted. Guilt? Devil take it, what had he to feel guilty for? He had not even been able to rouse himself for the baroness. For that matter, Addien would hardly care whose bed he kept warm.

The next stone-hard words to leave her lips confirmed as much. “What are you doing out here with me when you’ve got a baroness to bed, Malric?”

She didn’t care.

But the thought scraped him raw all the same.

His jaw locked. He’d be damned before he let her indifference sit easy.

Lost in his head, it took a moment to register Addien had taken off once more.

“By God, you have a job to do,” he clipped out.

“Same as you, Malric.” For the first time since he’d come outside, Addien looked at him. More specifically, she glanced all the way up.

He followed her stare to the baroness, tousled gown and all, watching them with open disapproval.

“You’ve got yer client waiting, after all.” Addien managed to pack more disdain and vitriol into that one word than the entire ton combined when they’d hurled traitor at him and his family. Somehow, her disapproval cut deeper.

Addien took off.

Cursing, he strode after her. “She is not a client.”

“Does Dynevor know that?”

“I mean,” he said, teeth clenched. “She is not my client.”

Addien whipped around and dropped her hands on her hips. “Then maybe ye shouldn’t be getting your jollies on Dynevor’s time, Malric.”

The jab landed square.

Thornwick scrubbed his hands over his face. “She isn’t my lover, Addien.” Why did it matter that she knew that?

When he let his arms fall, he found she’d already stalked off.

No, she wouldn’t waste a thought whose slit he buried himself in.

Burning with frustration—at himself, at her, for God knew why—he went after her. She’d set a bloody quick pace, one even he had to work to match.

“Don’t walk away from me, Addien,” he barked. When he caught up, he seized her lightly by the arm.

Addien flinched.

By God, she’d recoil from him? Rage—and something darker—surged.

“You can’t even look at me?” he jeered, the taunt landing as intended. “Never say you’re afraid I’ll—”

She faced him.

All the jibes and sharp words he’d meant to hurl at the headstrong beauty died on a whisper of air.