Carrick's eyebrow lifted slightly. "I got a lot of cockerels when I was a boy," he said proudly. "The practical upshot of it being that the officers of my barracks got to eat a lot more chicken than they otherwise would have." His pale eyes looked far away for a moment. "They used to call me Helios Glaukopis back then. When I was chosen to be initiated into the Krypteia they made me drop my given name altogether. No vampire was going to be named after the sun god."
Carrick signed the bill the waiter brought, and stood up, shrugging into his coat.
It occurred to Carrick that he had never truly had to woo or seduce Hermes. The boy had come to his bed willing and eager from the very first night he had belonged to Carrick. The hunt, the chase - that was something he'd never pursued with Hermes, he thought wistfully. If he was going to have to woo his eremenos in order to bring him back to his old self, it could be a pleasurable time for both of them.
There had been so many other boys Carrick had purchased on whom he had lavished a slow seduction before he had taken them to his bed. Some had been rebellious and proud, unwilling to bend their neck to the collar. He'd relished the breaking of those boys; the sound of their curses and screams as pain eventually turned to pleasure. Others had been virgins who had succumbed with a fearful shyness, trembling even as their bodies opened to him and they gasped out their climaxes against his mouth.
Carrick thought of Liam, the last boy he'd owned before Hermes. His little wildling - strong and direct and secretly hungry for his master's touch, but the boy had been so bewildered by his own feelings that Carrick had opted to seduce him slowly, treating him with patient but firm hand as if he was a nervous colt unaccustomed to the saddle. Liam was gone now, of course, fighting in the gladiatorial arenas of London. Carrick rarely thought of him these days; when he had bought Hermes, he had uickly become utterly enraptured with the golden haired shape shifter who had become the muse of his midnight hours.
As they stepped out of the restaurant and towards the car, Carrick lifted his head to the sky. "Let's walk,"he stated. "It's a beautiful night." The evening was cold and crisp, an autumn moon touching the bay with silver. He slipped and arm around Hermes' waist. "And you're safer with me than with anyone else."