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 cock 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?”