Hard to find privacy among the many fabrics hiding one bare pile of shadows from the others, but the coin falls on its lucky side, glistening in the candlelight: Daemon is more pleased than his crooked smile can express.

So appealingly tasty, the shadow you cast on the wall is a clothed devil testing his patience. But you laugh as if he's a drowning man and you're a distant shore; trying on the translucent fabrics, and his imagination, like a ship on choppy waters.

An unimaginably ridiculous situation: he couldn't find understanding in family, but your fingers replaced the family hearth, and your words caring tenderness. Low-class woman is an understatement; people like you aren't even asked their name, a faceless semblance of a person. But Daemon knows about you thoroughly; his favourite in the realm of fill your life with fast dopamine and the ridiculous pursuit of human warmth.

"Blue suits you," he grins, trying to find a spot on the sheets that doesn't make him feel like he's burning. "Turn round, let me see."

And you spin around, happy, blowing a kiss, posing, exposing your body to the transparency of the darkness. Daemon drains the goblet of wine, a heavy palm pressing you against him swiftly – you miss the moment he's so close.

Maybe the noise of the brothel distracts him. It's a growing flower of a rare kind, taking root in the soil of more than just physical affection: the talking, the ridiculous jokes – it's spiritual.

His fingers tangle in your hair at the back of your neck, you're the wingwoman, following him, and he almost devours you with his eyes. Thumb presses against your soft bottom lip, knuckles sliding along your jaw line. It's unfair how your beauty and soul are lost in titles.

"Would buy you out outright like that," the teasing chuckle seems muted in the privacy of his carelessness, you guarding it like a faithful watchdog. "Let you drink wine all day long and swirl in expensive silks."