Page 17 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

“Hurt you,” he finished, the words softer than he’d intended.

His gaze locked on her. Her cheek, redder than he’d ever seen it, stood out in stark contrast to her olive-toned skin. Specks of blood dotted her gown and neck—details he hadn’t taken in during his march up to her.

Horror—and something that tasted dangerously like fear—closed his throat, leaving him only two words. “ My God .”

With a small, puzzled dip of her brow, Addien followed his gaze.

She grunted. “Ain’t mine.”

A cold knot twisted in his gut, and then came the welcome heat of blistering, all-encompassing rage.

Some man had done this to her…

What other pain had Addien been made to suffer? The thought sank its claws into Thornwick, and from it dread and rage bloomed black and lethal. The predator inside him uncoiled, pacing, demanding the scent so it could run the bastard to ground.

The only thing that kept him from snatching her close and whisking her off to some corner where no savage—except for him—could touch her was the deep, dark predator caged inside Thornwick, demanding the hunt.

Thornwick needed the man’s face. His name.

His last breath.

“ Who?”

Addien gave him a strange look.

She felt unreal—some fever dream—slipping between the siren who tempted him, the spitfire who fought him, and now the woman someone had dared touch.

“Never mind,” he growled. “I do not require his name.”

I’ll find him my bloody self.

He’d turn over the treacherous baroness’s house until he did. With that, he took off at a canter. Someone would pay. And if that man didn’t come forward, then every last man who walked within those halls would die with Thornwick’s hands around their throats.

Stunned by Malric’s violent reaction to the sight of her, it took Addien a moment to gather her scattered wits.

Cursing roundly, she set off at a quick run after the sprinting Malric. She’d always been fast and nimble—a product of her size and her will to survive—but he could have challenged Mercury himself and not only won but been standing there waiting, alive and well, at the finish.

Breath burning her lungs, chest heaving, her side aching from the tumble she’d taken from the boxwood onto the gravel path, Addien slowed to a halt.

What in hell is wrong with me?

When he’d clapped eyes on her, he’d gone dead quiet; his bottomless black gaze flashing darker, hard with murderous fury.

She’d crossed ways with fellows itching for blood too many times to remember.

Then there had been Malric’s rage—dark and unbridled.

It’d put terror in any cutthroat’s heart, but left awe in hers.

Addien closed her eyes. She’d believed all that terrific fury reserved…

for her, on account she’d never had a man stand as her protector.

By hell, she’d prided herself on not needing anyone’s safekeeping.

There was a difference between needing and wanting. She’d never known it—until now, in Lady Darrow’s perfectly kept, bloom-laden gardens.

She’d never pictured herself craving a man’s defense, but there it was. A bitter laugh scraped from her throat. Like a noddy got it into her head, Malric went to pepper a cove on her account.

She’d wanted to believe that, and so she had, but dreams were as fleeting as breaths taken.

Her gaze hooked on the doorway he’d disappeared through, and bitter memories of what he’d been doing while she’d been battling for her freedom pressed in.

Bitterness sat like vinegar on Addien’s tongue. While he’d been all warm and easy in his fine lady’s arms, she’d been cold and cornered.

Him having his fine time cut short and that alone accounted for Malric’s wrathful—

“Nooo!”

An animal-like cry pierced the park-like grounds. It was the kind of blood-curdling wail made by weaker prey that had been pounced on by a creature bred for battle.

Her heart thumped.

This was the sound of a man in a one-sided battle—one Malric had initiated, dominated, and would finish to the death. The violence was raw, unmasked, and of the street, the sort she’d never thought to hear from a gentleman, for she hadn’t believed them capable of such primal ferocity.

Of course, she hadn’t ever met a man like Malric before either. Addien took off running, letting ear-splitting screams and pleas lead her way.

By the time she reached the source of them, the man’s wails had waned, but Lady Darrow’s caterwauling joined in.

“Unhand him now, Thornwick!” the baroness raged.

Addien stopped in her tracks and took in the sanguinary scene.

At some point, Malric had systematically disarmed no fewer than seven of the baroness’s big, burly footmen. And he’d made violent work of the brother, painting the laced-up dandy in various shades of his own blood.

The bulbous nose the viscount turned up at Addien was now shattered.

His protruding eyes, swollen shut, when—and if—opened, would sport a shade of purple, and only after the crimson smears were cleaned away.

Even the mangled pulverized version of Lord Dunworthy wasn’t enough to shake Addien’s breathless focus on Malric.

Transfixed, Addien stared at Malric, a warrior of old, resurrected from the ashes of his medieval ancestors and come back to life for the sole purpose of destruction.

His always immaculate locks lay in a tangle over his forehead; those dark strands parted enough to leave his vision clear, the damp, sweat slick strands parted enough to give him clear sight of his prey and to give Addien a sight of the deadly, dangerous, savage violence in his emotionless eyes.

If there’d even been a distant, fantastical possibility Addien wasn’t of the streets, the unnatural twist of tenderness and arousal at Malric’s charge of that violent tableau firmly cemented her among the have-nots.

Nay, it wasn’t just that.

Emotion closed off her throat.

Malric did this for—

“ You ,” a voice hissed. “This is all your fault. Dynevor sent you for my brother’s enjoyment, and this is what you’ll do?”

The baroness made a grab for Addien’s arm.

Built on a lifetime of instinct, Addien grasped the widow’s frail wrist and applied pressure.

The baroness cried out.

Christ!

Heart thundering, Addien immediately pulled her hand back and took a hasty step away from the powerful noblewoman.

A soul-penetrating hatred contorted the previously beautiful baroness’s features and twisted them into a mask carved from bitter malice. “My God, you will pay for that, you slut!” Lady Darrow’s rabid brown eyes burned bright with that vow of vengeance.

Cold prickled over Addien’s skin.

The lines she’d crossed today were likely too wide to return from, but on the ghost of a chance, she braced for the hand she knew was about to fall.

With a crazed smile, Lady Darrow drew her arm back.

Addien made herself watch the woman strike her, eyes locked, unblinking. To hell with them all.

As if the Devil adjusted the hands of time so Addien could watch her fate unfurl, moments moved to a crawl. The same elegant, tapering fingers the widow had all over Malric came hurtling for Addien in a blow—

That never landed.

Malric, his sharp, aquiline nose in full, feral flare, held the baroness’s wrist in a punishing grip. The instant he prevented the strike, he released the widow.

“Do not ever, madam,” he whispered. “If you strike her, if you or your brother so much as utter her name, you will rue the day you were born to the wealth and power that brought our paths together. Am I clear?” His hard lips were peeled back, displaying two rows of even sharp, white teeth, wolf-like in nature.

Quaking, the baroness nodded vigorously.

His half-crazed eyes slid across the room.

Addien followed his stare.

She and the baroness anticipated his next move. “Malric, no,” Addien barked.

Even when Addien was rushing to put herself between the marquess and the battered viscount, the baroness backed away. “You are mad, Thornwick.”

Addien flung herself in front of Dunworthy’s battered body.

“Get out of my way, Addien,” he growled; his eyes were sightless, unseeing.

This vision of him twisted and contorted into a thing of the streets, a monster, was one Addien felt a kindred connection to. The sight of Malric this way also restored her equilibrium and that of the room.

He is this way because of me.

This wasn’t who he was.

This is who he’d become for her.

No, because of me.

He hadn’t returned to tup the baroness, but to avenge Addien, but she didn’t want him like this.

“Malric!” she called sharply; Addien gripped his arm hard.

Both corners of his eyes twitched, and the muscles of his jaw rippled and spasmed.

She recognized the fight he fought within himself. She knew it all too well. It was one only carried by a creature that prowled and found itself prepared for war to the death.

She said his name again, this time more insistently. “ Malric .”

His sight, motionless, locked on Addien’s face. He blinked those silky, long dark lashes that absolutely no gentleman of his hard beauty had a right to.

While the baroness noisily wept in the background, a now lucid Malric ran a glacial gaze over the scene of his ruthless work.

His gaze lingered a moment more upon Dunworthy.

Addien rested her fingertips on his sleeve and gave him a brief squeeze. “Let it go, Malric,” she said softly.

Malric, her stalwart avenger, gave a curt nod.

As natural as a heartbeat, she slipped her fingers into his blood-smeared palm. With an enraged Lady Darrow’s threats to their futures following, Addien and Malric left.