effect was blacked out eyes that were both creepy and unreadable.
Shivaun didn’t need to read the female’s eyes when her body language made her message outlandishly obvious. She sidled up to Lyric with a wide smile and, ignoring Shy as if she was invisible, the poacher pressed her lithe body into the demon’s side.
“Hello, Lyric.” The sound was more hiss than tone and Shivaun didn’t like it. At all.
“Hello,” Lyric said.
“Awkartis.” The female reminded him of her name.
“Oh, yes. Sorry. We’ll take my usual table,” he said, looking at Shivaun.
Awkartis seemed to recognize that Lyric was with someone for the first time. Her head jerked toward Shy, who for a second thought she felt little barbed tingles like the uncomfortable feeling of adrenaline shooting through the bloodstream.
“Of course.” Awkartis bowed her head to Lyric and walked away, her bare ass in full view.
Shivaun hoped Awkartis sat on a wood bench and scooted until that ass was full of splinters.
When they sat down on Lyric’s preferred divan, the one with the best view of the small stage, she said, “Past conquest?”
Lyric looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“Awkartisssssssssss.”
Lyric laughed at Shivaun making fun of the hostess’s hissy speech. “I think you’re asking if I’ve fucked the waitress. I’ve never understood why humans took to calling shared sex a conquest. Of all the astoundingly bizarre things they’ve done, that one makes the top fifty.”
“Hmmm. I could no’ help but noticin’ that you did no’ answer the question. Did you notice that as well?”
He grinned. “I don’t see how that topic of conversation will move this date in the direction I have in mind.”
“What direction is that?”
He chuckled. “Conquest.”
“Very funny. Let’s just turn it ‘round. Shall we? Say we went to a pub I know in Dublin. The young proprietor presses himself into my body, acts as if he has good reason to speak my name intimately, and pretends to not notice that you are in corporeal form. Would ye be curious about my history with the lad?”
Lyric’s eyes had dilated so that somehow he looked more dangerous. He took in a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Would you ask about my history with the lad?”
“I get it. I’m going to tell you the truth, which is what I suspect is also what you want to hear.”
“Very well. Go ahead.”
“I would be out of my mind with the need to rip the head from his body and set it on the pineapple point stake of the nearest iron fence.”
Whatever response Shy had been expecting, it wasn’t that. Her beautiful mouth formed an, “Oh,” several seconds before her voice followed.
“As to the hostess, honestly, Shivaun, I don’t recall.”
The ecstatic moment of hearing that Lyric would become feverishly murderous at the thought of her copulating with another male vanished quickly when the subject returned to Awkartis.
“You do no’ recall,” she repeated drily.
“I do not.”
“How is that possible?”
He shrugged and looked around the room. “It’s already been established. I’m old as rocks and have been getting them off for as long as your people have recorded history. I don’t remember every female I’ve shared sex with. We have to find a way to get past this because…”
“Because what?”
“Because it would smother our relationship if you had to experience the quaking rage I just felt every time a female says she knows me.”
Shivaun looked away as she thought that over and Lyric gave her time to consider. At length she said, “Well, I do no’ want to embarrass you, but if you’re truly proclaimin’ that I have girlfriend status, then I’m no’ goin’ to meekly be ignored by tarts and trollops.”
The demon was both intrigued and amused. “Don’t worry about embarrassing me. I want you to feel secure with girlfriend status. If I claim that you and I are an item, you have every right to claim the same about me. So, what would you do differently? In that situation? If there’s a next time? Not that there will definitely be a next time. No way to be sure.”
“Do ye think I could take her in a fight?” Lyric burst into laughter and guffawed so hard that other patrons turned to look. “What’s so funny?” Shivaun gritted.
Lyric laughed because Shivaun had no idea the power she wielded, that she could pulverize a notscot like Awkartis. With a single thought she could turn the other woman into two pounds of dust on the floor. He also thought the best thing would be to allow her to grow into that power, which eventually