"It's rumored that you're attracted to good girls, to

virtuous women."

After an inward shake, he said, "I want a good queen

for my people."

"But that's not what you need in bed."

"And how would you know that?"

"By the way you've been eye-fucking my body in this attire and tenting your sheet. Do you know what I think? I think that deep down, you've always wanted a wicked girl. Fate knew it, and that's why I was given to you. I think you've been taking virtuous women-

self-sacrificing, boring, virtuous women-only because that's what you were taught to do."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know everything about you, Rydstrom. I've studied you for years, devouring unauthorized biographies of the very old kind. And over the last two days, I've reviewed all the texts on your family's history, on your history. I've been working to reconcile what was written with what I know about you personally."

Sweat beaded on his brow. How much could she have learned?

"For instance, I'd read that you attempted your first female on your thirteenth birthday and your second the day after. I believe this to be true."

It was. For a demon prince, attempting females was critical. He'd bedded one after another, trying to find his consort. Rydstrom had taken more females in the first century of his life than he had during the fourteen that followed.

She continued, "They were all older than you and they were 'ladies,' which is code for 'sexually ignorant.' Did they simper? Did they call that your penis instead of your cock?" she asked, pointing a claw -tipped finger at it. "And were they too gentle with it?"

Yes to all those questions. He hated gentle. He wanted to take a woman over a long night and feel it the next day. When he'd been a young male, he'd had a friend who would show off the claw marks down his back from his latest abandoned conquest. Rydstrom had envied him bitterly.