Page 25 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

“You really haven’t learned anything about me,” she said quietly, cutting off the rest of his warning. “Loyalty.”

Malric gave her a questioning look.

“You asked what matters to me. You talked about honor and reputation. For me, loyalty is the only code worth living by.” Filled with self-disgust, Addien shook her head.

“It was easier when I hated you, Malric,” she spat.

“But you’ve pulled me out of the muck enough times now.

If you can’t see you’ve got my loyalty, that I’m not looking to cross you at every turn, then your judgment’s worse than I thought. ”

Her voice, fierce and unguarded, stripped her bare. Addien dropped her gaze, shot to her feet, and slipped past him. That he could think so low of her—she’d sooner put a knife to her own throat than let him see how it stung.

With a sleekness no man of his size ought to possess, Malric stepped into her path. He did not lay a hand upon her—no seizing of her wrist, no claiming of her arm. She knew why. For all his power, he was a gentleman, and mindful she had been handled roughly this day. He would not startle her.

“I have offended you.”

Addien lifted her chin. “Do you mean that as a question?”

His gaze held hers. Slowly, he touched his right fist to his chest and inclined his head. The gesture—simple, solemn—spoke more than any words might have done. He let his arm fall to his side.

“I served the Home Office,” he said, his tone low. “I was adept at my work.”

She didn’t have a shred of doubt.

“My brother worked for a man at the Home Office. As I understand it, in part regard for his employer and in part aspirations, my brother put an end to the gentleman’s days as an assassin.”

“How?”

“I’m unclear of the details, only that my brother ensured the man was marked. One cannot take on those covert duties when one’s”—Malric motioned alongside his cheek— “face has been laid open by a blade.”

A gentleman with half his face scarred, who’d served in the Home Office…

Everyone knew the tale. At least, that was everyone at war with the rival gaming hells throughout London.

Addien knew before Malric spoke it aloud.

“Lord Severin Cadogan.”

Addien tensed. “Of Forbidden Pleasures,” she spat.

Malric inclined his head. “The very same.”

Her mind spun.

Lachlan Latimer, second only to Dynevor, and only because Dynevor rescued Addien, proved as good, just, and loyal a man as she’d ever known. As such, she, along with all the other staff, guards, and servants in the Devil’s Den, were brought in when Lachlan Latimer was made partner.

The Duke of Argyll and the Marquess of Rutherford forced the street-born Latimer out in favor of Lord Severin Cadogan.

And the Devil’s Den embraced Latimer as one of their own.

Addien whistled. “That’s a story.”

“It is something,” he muttered.

Malric didn’t say anything else.

She frowned. “Not sure why that has anything to do with you, Malric?”

“In society, the actions of one’s family has everything to do with a man’s person.” Never more had he the look or sound of the duke he’d one day be than he did while explaining that to someone of another ilk. “My brother’s actions ended my career. His shame belongs to the family.”

Addien snorted. “Well, that’s a load of shite. Leave it to the nobility to not even let a single man stand guilty for the crimes he is guilty of.”

Malric went still.

A laugh burst from him with a suddenness and fierceness that left them both startled.

He gave his head another wry shake. “And leave it to you, Addien, to hear my brother is a traitor to the Crown and betrayed his business and saw me released from my responsibilities at the Home Office as a commentary on the Ton.”

Addien pieced it together.

When the air between them took on the seriousness of before, Addien spoke. “That’s why they called you Mauley.”

“That’s why some still do.”

The insult hadn’t been in the staff stripping the marquess of his title. It’d been a nod to Malric’s ties to a traitor.

“I didn’t know that.”

He looked at her askance.

“Would it have made a difference?”

He sounded genuinely curious.

Addien considered and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “At the time, I don’t think it would’ve.”

And now he slid closer, gesturing her one way so he could resume his care of her.

Addien looked to where the provisions were and shook her head.

I don’t need any more tending . It was on the tip of her tongue to say as much, but she didn’t.

He’d already let her in and needed a shift in topic, considering what it had taken a man of his pride and secrets to share.

She didn’t reclaim her seat for her as much as for everything he had shared. She still wanted to know more.

“Was the duke unscathed?” she asked as he rung out a cool compress and pressed it against her face.

His lips twisted in a hate filled smile. “The duke is always unscathed.”

“Well then, I think you should find some comfort in the fact that you will one day be duke and benefit from the same…” The rest of her response withered on her lips.

Hate burned from the depths of his eyes with a scorching intensity. She checked her arm for marks. So convinced it was her who he directed his wrath at. It took a moment to register that loathing belonged entirely to the man who’d sired him.

“I want nothing of the Duke of Calderay. Were it in my power to sever all ties and begin anew upon this earth with naught but what I could wrest from it with my own hands and blood, I would do so gladly. All that I do is for the sole purpose of thwarting him—and making him suffer.”

The haunted glimmer in his eyes was one she knew well. She had seen it in her own reflection, in windowpanes and mirrors, when the ghost of Mac Diggory came calling. Shadows born of cruelty and suffering haunted them both.

Addien chose her words with care as he set aside the cloth he had been using to bathe her face. This time, he plucked an ice cube from the bowl.

“It is far easier to say one would rather be born with nothing than to have truly been born with nothing.”

His fingers tightened around the ice until it shot from his grasp and landed in her lap. She retrieved the cold fragment and held it out to him.

Malric made no move to take it. “Ahh,” he purred. “You think you know so very much.”

“I know you have never been hungry,” she said. “You were not born not knowing your mother’s name—because she was some nameless whore—or your father’s, for there were too many possibilities. Hate him as you do, he yet has power and connections from which you have benefitted.”

His eyelid twitched—the telltale mark of displeasure.

“I do not judge you in your world, yet you judge me in mine,” he said, his whisper edged with steel.

“I am not judging you. I am speaking from a place of truth.”

His nostrils flared.

Addien sighed. “Malric, if your entire life is devoted to vexing your father, every choice and every provocation made solely to enrage him, then you know nothing of—”

He pounced, close enough that the words faltered on her breath. Framing her with his broader body, he held her fast in his gaze. “Nothing of what?”

“Suffering,” she answered simply.

“Suffering.” He repeated the word without inflection, which was somehow more dangerous than when he seethed in rage.

She forced herself to nod. Only then did he draw back, and her heart at last slowed its frantic beat.

“The thing about suffering, Addien,” he said almost lightly, selecting from the bowl an ice cube melted to a mere shard, “is that it wears many faces.”

“I am aware,” she replied, though her voice shook as he lowered the ice to the tender skin at her wrist.

“In truth, some even take pleasure in it.”

This time she did not hide her mirth, letting a soft snort escape.

He clicked his tongue. “How certain you are of what you know—and how little, in fact, you do?”

“And how have you suffered?” she asked. “I have told you of mine.”

“All this talk of suffering, as though it is a thing only to be feared.” Something dark slid into his tone, a dangerous whisper in the air between them.

Retreat was impossible; she was caught.

“It is,” she said before she could stop herself.

He smiled—smug, knowing. This was the other face of the Marquess of Thornwick: primal, condescending, and infuriatingly certain.

She should despise it more than she ached for it.

“You have not been properly taught—by any man—before me.” A shiver chased down her spine at the promise in his voice, a promise that compelled as much as it unsettled.

She fought to muster indifference, self-command—anything other than this breathless awareness.

“Again?” he purred.

“We never began.”

“This ice, for instance,” he murmured, inching the cube closer to her skin, “it can wound, as when I first touched you with it. But…”

The cold bit into her flesh and her breath hissed between her teeth. “Bleedin’ hell. There is nothing pleasurable about—” She broke off as he shifted the cube aside and breathed warmly over her chilled skin. The contrast sent her pulse racing and her breath ragged.

His smile told her he knew the effect he was having.

He traced the ice along her arm, then bent to lick the droplets from her skin.

Her breath caught, her eyes fluttered shut.

She meant to tell him to stop, for this was not longing—it was a calculated distraction meant to make her forget what he had revealed.

But when she opened her mouth, only a soft, betraying moan escaped.

He chuckled, sliding the cube along her neck before chasing it with his breath. Heat pooled low in her belly, shame and yearning warring within her.

“You see,” he murmured, “ice soothes bruises…but it is far more diverting in the throes of lovemaking.” His lips moved with the words, brushing her over-sensitized skin in what might have been an unintentional kiss—if anything with Malric could be unintentional.

“S-stop,” she managed at last, stumbling over the word.

He stilled, mouth close to her ear, body tense.

“I know what you are on about,” she breathed.

“Do you?” he whispered. “And what is that?”

“Distracting me,” she replied, her voice as breathless as his thumb was sure upon her collarbone.

And God help her, she wished it was more.