Smiling his own lazy, arrogant smile, Lucivar stepped forward and slowly stretched his dark wings their full span before tucking them tight to his body. “Hello, Bastard.”

Daemon’s smile thawed. “Hello, Prick. It’s been a long time.”

“So it has. Drunk any good wines lately?”

“None that you’d appreciate.” Daemon studied Lucivar’s clothes and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve decided to be a good boy?”

Lucivar snorted. “I decided I wanted decent food and a decent bed for a change and a few days out of Pruul, and all I have to do is lick the bottom of Zuultah’s boots when she returns from the stable.”

“Maybe that’s your trouble, Prick. You’re not supposed to lick her boots, you’re supposed to kiss her ass.” He turned and glided down the path.

Remembering why he’d wanted to talk to Daemon, Lucivar followed reluctantly until they reached a gazebo tucked in one corner of the garden where they couldn’t be seen from the mansion. Daemon smiled that cold, sweet smile and stepped aside to let him enter first.

Never let a predator smell fear.

Annoyed by his own uneasiness, Lucivar turned to study the luminescent leaves of the firebush nearby. He stiffened when Daemon came up behind him, when the long nails whispered over his shoulders, teasing his skin in a loverlike fashion.

“Do you want me?” Daemon whispered, brushing his lips against Lucivar’s neck.

Lucivar snorted and tried to pull away, but the caressing hand instantly became a vise. “No,” he said flatly. “I endured enough of that in Eyrien hunting camps.” With a teeth-baring grin, he turned around. “Do you really think your touch makes my pulse race?”

“Doesn’t it?” Daemon whispered, a strange look in his eyes.

Lucivar stared. Daemon’s voice was too crooning, too silky, too dangerously sleepy. Hell’s fire, Lucivar thought desperately as Daemon’s lips brushed his, what was wrong with him? This wasn’t his kind of game.

Lucivar jerked back. Daemon’s nails dug into the back of his neck. The sharp thumbnails pricked his throat. Keeping his fists pressed against his thighs, Lucivar closed his eyes and submitted to the kiss.

No reason to feel humiliation and shame. His body was responding to stimulation the same way it would to cold or hunger. Physical response had nothing to do with feelings or desire. Nothing.

But, Mother Night, Daemon could set a stone on fire!

“Why are you doing this?” Lucivar gasped. “At least tell me why.”

“Why not?” Daemon replied bitterly. “I have to whore for everyone else, why not you?”

“Because I don’t want you to. Because you don’t want to. Daemon, this is madness! Why are you doing this?”

Daemon pressed his forehead against Lucivar’s. “Since you already know the answer, why ask me?” He kneaded Lucivar’s shoulders. “I can’t stand being touched by them anymore. Ever since…I can’t stand the feel of them, the smell of them, the taste of them. They’ve raped everything I am until there’s nothing clean left to offer.”

Lucivar wrapped his hands around Daemon’s wrists. The shame and bitterness saturating Daemon’s psychic scent scraped a nerve he had refused to probe over the past five years. Once she was old enough to understand what it meant, would that sapphire-eyed little cat despise them for the way they’d been forced to serve? It wouldn’t matter. He would fight with everything in him for the chance to serve her. And so would Daemon. “Daemon.” He took a deep breath. “Daemon, she’s come.”