“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 fucked 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 fuck 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.