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“Rub the spot,” Conn ordered.

I tilted my head down and glared at him. “Ya better be serious. I’m at the end of my patience.”

“I’m serious,” he said with a toothy demon grin, adding a rumbling growl to convince me.

Given his high amusement, his weird growling might have been just another type of demon laughter. We didn’t have time for me to torture the truth out of him, but I would not forget this if it was a trick.

I rubbed the tiny spot and felt magick shoot out of it. An image of a beautiful brunette appeared in the air above our heads. She was in human form and stacked in all the right places, but not pregnant at all.

“Is that yer demoness?” I asked Rasmus.

His head shook under my fingers. “No. She was brunette like her but looked different.”

Conn lumbered around us to face the image. His eyes blazed red, and the demoness gasped. “What compulsion did you place on this man?” he asked the ethereal form.

I thought he was acting crazy until the image wavered and eventually focused on Conn.

“This was not my compulsion, Great King,” she said, kneeling down.

“Liar. Your signature sealed it. Answer my question,” Conn ordered in his deepest voice.

“It belongs to Lilith of the Argosy Caste. She placed the compulsion. I merely sealed it for her.”

“If you are lying to me about its creator, I will find out.”

She rose in the image and held out both arms. “I would never lie to you. Take what proof you require.”

I had no time to ask what she was offering him before Conn swiped at the air.

“Bah... go away,” he ordered.

The woman and the image faded from our view.

Conn turned to me with glowing red eyes. “She was under compulsion herself and probably lying. Keep looking. We need to make sure we find all of them. Something more is happening here.”

I nodded. Conn’s seriousness had cured me of my lust. He joined me in searching, breathing hard through nostrils the size of cannons. Rasmus didn’t even flinch when Conn’s breath wafted over his skin.

Maybe my magick neutralized the compulsion we found, or maybe Conn breathing on him overrode it. Whatever the case, Rasmus didn’t bat an eyelash when I asked him to drop his drawers. He slid them off and down, and I pretended to be a doctor as I searched his nether regions.

When I found the next one, I had Conn put a hand on Rasmus to steady him because I wasn’t sure what rubbing something in that sensitive area on his body would do. I sent my magick into the spot and felt Rasmus shiver before hissing.

An image shot out of it with a different brunette demon in human form this time.

She didn’t look pregnant, but Rasmus pointed and said, “That’s her. That’s the one who seduced me.”

Conn growled, turned away, and stomped to the wall. He morphed from his demon form into a dog before scampering out of the basement like the hounds of hell were chasing after him.

ChapterTwelve

When a naked Rasmus stood, I patted him on the butt—accidentally. I meant to pat his lower back, but he was so tall that I misjudged when I reached out. “Ya can get dressed now. If I let ya stay out of the cage, are ya going to call Jack?”

“No, I don’t even want to. Why did Conn leave when he saw that last demon woman? He didn’t leave for the first one.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know. He’ll tell me when he can. Whoever that demoness is, I think he knows her. This sort of reaction has happened a few times before. Conn’s immortal. He’s seen more than any being should ever have seen in a life. His time with me is simply the latest blink in his timeline.”

Since Conn wasn’t here to tease me, I watched Rasmus dress. He turned his back for the most interesting parts, but I didn’t mind that view either. He looked as good as a man half his age. I tried to imagine him sweating in a gym to get those muscles, but I couldn’t bring the visual to mind. Chopping wood maybe? Or perhaps he lifted heavy things for fun.

“I feel... different,” he said.