  We present near-infrared (NIR) broadband (0.80--2.42 $\mu$m) spectroscopy of
two low mass X-ray binaries: V404 Cyg and Cen X-4. One important parameter
required in the determination of the mass of the compact objects in these
systems is the binary inclination. We can determine the inclination by modeling
the ellipsoidal modulations of the Roche-lobe filling donor star, but the
contamination of the donor star light from other components of the binary,
particularly the accretion disk, must be taken into account. To this end, we
determined the donor star contribution to the infrared flux by comparing the
spectra of V404 Cyg and Cen X-4 to those of various field K-stars of known
spectral type. For V404 Cyg, we determined that the donor star has a spectral
type of K3 III. We determined the fractional donor contribution to the NIR flux
in the H- and K-bands as $0.98 \pm .05$ and $0.97 \pm .09$, respectively. We
remodeled the H-band light curve from \citet{sanwal1996} after correcting for
the donor star contribution to obtain a new value for the binary inclination.
From this, we determined the mass of the black hole in V404 Cyg to be $M_{BH}=
9.0^{+.2}_{-.6}M_{\odot}$. We performed the same spectral analysis for Cen X-4
and found the spectral type of the donor star to be in the range K5 -- M1V. The
donor star contribution in Cen X-4 is $0.94\pm.14$ in the H-band while in the
K-band, the accretion disk can contribute up to 10% of the infrared flux. We
remodeled the H-band light curve from \citet{shahbaz1993}, again correcting for
the fractional contribution of the donor star to obtain the inclination. From
this, we determined the mass of the neutron star as $M_{NS}=
1.5^{+.1}_{-.4}M_{\odot}$. However, the masses obtained for both systems should
be viewed with some caution since contemporaneous light curve and spectral data
are required to obtain definitive masses.
