“So why not just kill me? Why hold me prisoner?”

Because I have to protect you, too, and your brothers seem ready to cut your heart out.

“Maybe I want to keep you chained to my bed as a sex slave before I kill you.” Stupid thing to say, because the possibilities started rolling through her head.

“If that were true,” he drawled, “you’d have f**ked me instead of jerking me off.” His lopsided smile and mussed hair gave him a charming boyish appearance that was at odds with the crude words and the raw masculinity he threw off. “And I know you wanted to f**k me, but you didn’t. So the sex slave thing? Not buying it.”

“You are incredibly arrogant.”

“Am I wrong?” His tone said he knew damned good and well that he wasn’t wrong.

She ignored his question. “Tell me who hired you.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “We’re back to that again?”

“It’s kind of important.”

Lore shrugged, rattling the chains. “No one hired me. Kynan’s a tool. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“Even though you told Eidolon that Kynan was an assignment, I might believe you if I hadn’t found another one of my charges being slaughtered by a female assassin.”

Something flickered in his dark gaze. “Coincidence.”

“Really?” She gently wiped his shredded wrist beneath the cuff. It must have hurt, but he didn’t flinch. “Is it also coincidence that the assassin bore faded Seminus tattoos just like yours?”

This time, the change in his expression was an easy read: fear. He schooled it hastily, but still too late.

“Who is she?” Idess pressed. “And why have assassins been sent after my Primori?”

“No idea. What are Primori?”

“Primori are what I’m assigned to protect,” she said vaguely. “And you’re lying.”

“You think assassin masters share anything with their slave-assassins? We’re given a job to do and we don’t care why.”

“Lovely.”

He snorted. “You are judging me? Hello, I didn’t chain anyone to a bed to use as a sex slave. Not that I mind,” he added. “But I could sex you up a lot better if I were free.”

Impossible male. “Tell me about the female Seminus,” she ground out.

“There are no female Sems,” Lore said. “Male Sems use females of other species as hosts for their offspring, which are all born male.”

“Then she’s a mate.” Again, some unknown emotion brought color into his cheeks, and a disturbing thought made her gut twist. “Yours? Is she yours?”

He just stared. Now he decided to clam up. But his silence was answer enough.
* * *

Lore kept a curious eye on Idess, noting how suddenly ill she seemed after asking if Sin was his mate. No way was she jealous. Maybe the idea that she might have gotten intimate with a taken male disturbed her goodie-two-shoes self.

Funny.

But it wasn’t funny that she knew about Sin, and by the looks of it, their introduction hadn’t involved handshakes. Idess’s bottom lip was swollen and cut, there was a gash in her upper arm, and thick locks of hair had come free of her ponytail, giving her a Xena, Warrior Princess, look he shouldn’t appreciate. But did. Or would have, if he wasn’t worried about his sister.

He kept his voice level. Barely. “Where is the female?” She said nothing, and he snarled, sick of her game, whatever it was. “What did you do to her?”

Idess avoided eye contact, instead concentrating on smoothing ointment onto his wrist. He couldn’t wait until she got to his right arm. She’d be so dead. She might have managed to escape contact with his dermoire earlier, but he’d get her to touch it now.

“If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Answer me!” he roared, and she recoiled.

“Don’t worry,” she snapped. “She got away. But she did kill one of my Primori.”

Good. Sounded like Sin had completed her mission. No slavery at the hands of the Neethul for her. But if he didn’t take care of Kynan, doing vile things for the Neethul would be the least of her concerns. “That’s too bad, Cookie.”

Idess ignored his sarcasm and moved to his other side. Anticipation swelled as she prepared to wipe down his right arm. He rolled his head toward her and tried not to admire the long, lush lashes framing her big toffee eyes. Eyes that had watched him with stark hunger as she stroked him. They’d gone half-mast, darkened, and she’d rolled her bottom lip between sexy white teeth as though she’d wanted to use her mouth instead of her hand.

He’d have been all right with that. More than all right. Hell, he was getting hard again just thinking about it. Idess leaned in. Maybe she’d kiss him. If she got into it the way she had when she’d jerked him off, he’d enjoy every second of it. At least, until she got carried away and came into contact with his arm.

Closer. Closer… in a moment she’d be dead and he’d… what? He’d be chained up with no way to get free.

“Stop!”

She froze, the cloth mere millimeters from his arm. “What?”

“My arm… it’s sensitive. Leave it alone.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. For a big, bad demon assassin, you’re a baby.” Glaring at him, she dropped the washcloth, and he breathed a sigh of relief. And then, to his horror, she put her palm gently on his forearm.

“Idess!”

She gasped, her eyes going wide. Her fingers dug into his skin and she groaned… but oddly, she didn’t seem to be in pain. If anything, he’d say the expression on her face was as far from death as it could be.

Was she…? Nah. If she was coming, she’d be wild. And loud. Somehow he knew she’d be vocal in bed.

“Lore,” she moaned. Her touch grew lighter, her fingers barely resting on his arm—but she was touching him.

Stunned, he stared at her hand. Her warmth seeped into his dermoire and radiated up his arm, the exact opposite of what should have happened. Why hadn’t she keeled over? It didn’t escape his notice that he’d called her by her name in his panic, and for some reason, doing so felt strangely… intimate. Finally, she pulled away, her eyes focused on the way his markings writhed on his skin. “What… what just happened?”

“Ah… I don’t know. What did just happen?”

Tentatively, she touched him again. This time, the experimental swipe of her fingers seemed to have no effect. “I don’t understand. When I touched you before, it was…”

“Orgasmic?”

She speared him a look of annoyance. “Hardly. It was as if I took energy from you. Do you feel drained?”

Winking, he rocked his hips. “Oh, yeah.”

This time she just huffed. “I’m serious.”

“So was I.”

She muttered something about incubi that didn’t sound complimentary. “Maybe it has something to do with the Bracken Cuffs.”

Bracken Cuffs, the same demon jailer devices his brothers had used on him last month to negate his gift. He should have known. No wonder she hadn’t fried when she touched him.

“Is it okay to wash it now?” she asked.

His c*ck jerked. “It?”

“Your arm,” she ground out.

“Why do you care?”

She shrugged and reached for the wet cloth again. “I have to keep you from killing Kynan, but that doesn’t mean I want you to suffer.” She dabbed blood from his abraded wrists. “Does it hurt?”

Far from it. The swirling glyphs had always been sensitive; he hadn’t lied about that. But they were sensitive in a highly erotic way, and now that it was clear she wasn’t going to die from touching them, the nerve endings just beneath their surfaces sparked, each brush of her fingertips sending pleasant jolts straight to his groin. God, no female had ever touched his arm like that, and it shook him. Excited him. Threatened to drive him to heights he’d never known.

“No,” he rasped. “I’m good.”

“The glyphs are remarkable,” she said. “They seem to move.” She traced one with a fingernail, and he bit back a groan. “They’re not tattoos, are they?”

“They’re a history of our paternity.”

“Were you born with them?”

“Most Sems are.”

She rinsed the cloth and went back to wiping down his arm, even though it no longer seemed necessary, and a shiver stole through him. “But you weren’t? Does this have anything to do with your human breeding?”

“How do you know I’m from human stock?”

“I can smell the human in your blood.” She shifted on the bed.

He didn’t see any reason to keep his background a secret, and besides, maybe if he could get her talking, she’d reveal information he could use. Like why she was guarding Kynan. And if it was true that only angels could harm him. And how Lore could get around that minor detail. “My mother was human. Apparently, that makes things go a little screwy.”

“So when did you gain the symbols?”

“When I was twenty.” They’d come with a side order of pain, followed by a dessert of lust and rage. Oh, yeah… good times.

She used a square fingernail to trace the outline of the arrowhead symbol in the crook of his elbow. His erection throbbed as though it hadn’t just enjoyed the most intense orgasm of its life. “And how long ago was that?”

“If you want to know how old I am,” he said, “you can just ask.”

“Fine. How old are you?”

“I was born in 1880. You?”

Her grin transformed her face from beautiful to drop-dead gorgeous. “I’m considerably older than you are.”

“Yeah?” He waggled his brows. “I’ve always had a thing for older women.”