Desire curled in her gut, and a heady sense of power shot right to her head with dizzying speed. She could change the intervals between his breaths by altering the speed of her strokes. She could make him moan by altering the tightness of her grip. And when she swiped her thumb against the area just under the head, his entire body arched.

Crazily, her body arched, too. Toward him. She was shockingly aroused by this, in a way she’d never been. Oh, she got antsy at times, but punishing exercise or dessert sprees never failed to rescue her from lust’s clutches. This time, she had a feeling no amount of push-ups or tiramisu would ease the ache that throbbed through her. Her pulse beat erratically through her veins, her ni**les hardened into sensitive pearls that rasped against her bra with every uneven breath, and somehow she had slid right up to the edge of orgasm.

Would it go against her vow to come even without touching herself? If it was an accident?

An accidental orgasm. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because her body was a pot about to boil over, and as much as she craved what she’d been denied for so long, she also couldn’t risk it.

Angry and hurting, she took it out on Lore, since really, this was his fault. She squeezed him harder, pumped him faster, drawing a pleasured hiss out of him. He watched her as though trying to figure out a way to get to her, but when she looked back down at the erotic sight of his plum-ripe head thrusting through the ring of her fingers, he became lost in the rhythm, throwing his head back once more.

“Don’t… stop.” His guttural voice was at once a command and a plea, and he came suddenly, his body bucking with such violence that she had to grip his hip to keep from being thrown. A raw curse erupted from deep inside his chest, and s**en shot onto her hand and in thick ropes over his six-pack abs.

He was beautiful, so big, his muscles straining and his body hard. He’d feel good on top of her, his weight holding her down as he thrust into her. He’d be na**d, sweaty, and they’d be skin on hot skin, their bodies joined and their tongues tangling.

Pressure reached critical at her core, and she realized she was grinding herself against his thigh even as she finished him off with her hand. Her gaze flew up to his face, and she drew a startled, horrified breath at the way he was focused on her, eyes drowsy but glowing with knowledge.

Clearing her throat, she released his penis, which was still semihard. “How often do you need sex?” she asked casually, though she felt anything but, especially with the way her skin tingled where his seed had splashed over her hand, filling her with the oddest urge to smooth it over sensitive, private places.

“Few times a day.” His voice was husky, a lovely postcoital growl.

More rattled than she cared to admit, she peeled herself off him to visit the bathroom and slap a bandage over the cut on her arm. By the time she finished, she felt almost normal again, though she could definitely use a cold shower and two gallons of spumoni ice cream.

She found a tube of antibiotic ointment in her medicine cabinet, wetted a washcloth, and returned to Lore. “If you don’t get sex, you go into rages?”

“Yes,” he grunted, as though embarrassed. “How did you manage to truss me up? And what do you plan to do to me?”

“I made you truss your own self up.” She sank down on the mattress beside him. “And I plan to keep you from killing Kynan.”

“You’re an angel, right? Like, Kynan’s guardian angel?”

“Something like that.” Gently, she wiped away the blood on his left arm, working her way from his thick shoulder to the cuff around his wrist. His skin was supple, smooth, the muscles beneath set with deep grooves between the mounds of steel. She lingered more than she should.

“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**k 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.”