“Was there a woman with him? A witch?”

“I’d gone to that hovel to get away from the stink of witches. I wouldn’t have stayed in the room if one of them had been present.”

Krelis took a deep breath and forgot what he was going to say. The air in the room felt soft, heavy. An elusive scent drifted past him, a scent that warmed the muscles in his groin at the same time it melted the tension from the rest of his body.

He took another deep breath. What had they been talking about? The Shalador Warlord. Now he remembered. “You talked all evening and remember nothing?”

“We talked during dinner.”

“Did he mention the Gray Lady?”

“He wasn’t quite that boring.”

“What—” Krelis bit his lip. The pain cleared his head a little. “I want to know what the two of you did that evening.”

Daemon turned and looked at him. “Do you?” he asked too softly.

Krelis nodded slowly.

Daemon smiled that cold, cruel smile.

Krelis shuddered and then gasped.

Long-nailed fingers whispered down his back, over his buttocks, down the backs of his thighs. They were still drifting over his calves when another pair of phantom hands brushed the back of his neck and began the journey.

“He bored me.” Daemon took a couple of graceful, predatory steps toward Krelis. “It left me feeling mean, so I seduced him.”

Another pair of phantom hands whispered over Krelis’s chest and belly, separating just before they reached his groin to travel down the front of his legs.

“He was begging by the time I began to feel amused,” Daemon crooned, taking another step toward Krelis.

Krelis opened his mouth to protest.

The tip of a phantom tongue delicately licked his upper lip.

Another tongue licked the inside of his thigh, moving upward.

Warm breath washed over his balls, over his hard organ.

“He was sobbing by the time I left the room,” Daemon crooned, coming just a little closer, but still not close enough to touch.

A phantom mouth brushed against Krelis’s throat. Sucked gently.

“Do you want me to show you what I did to him?”

Krelis couldn’t think. Didn’t want to think about anything but that beautiful face, about the moment when that real mouth would glide over his hot skin, when that real tongue would—

Daemon smiled. “I thought not.”

Everything stopped. Instantly.

Krelis swayed. His vision blurred. Every breath made his body throb. In that moment, he would have promised anything, done anything to make Daemon finish it.

Knowing that revolted him.

He bit his lip until it bled. By the time he could think again, Daemon was looking out the window as if nothing had happened.

Krelis wanted to lash out, wanted to threaten some kind of dire punishment that would make up for his body’s screaming need for relief.

Daemon turned his head and smiled that cold, cruel smile.