Man, what a joy this was. He had to give the princess his body. But he was choosing to give Ehlena…

Well, shit, he didn’t know exactly, but it was a fuckload more than just his cock. Worth so much more, too.

Palming his cane, because he didn’t want to have to rely on her for balance, he took her to the bedroom, with its swimming pool-size bed and its black satin duvet and its view.

He shut the door with his mind, even though there was no one else in the penthouse, and the first thing he did was turn Ehlena to face him and take her hair out of its twist tie. The deep strawberry blond waves fell to just below her shoulders, and though he couldn’t feel the silken strands, he could smell the light, natural bouquet of her shampoo.

She was clean and fresh, like a stream he could bathe himself in.

He paused, an unfamiliar spike of conscience reining him in. If she knew what he was, if she knew what he did for a living, if she knew what he did with his body, she wouldn’t choose him. He was sure of this.

“Don’t stop,” she said, tilting her face up. “Please…”

With force of will, he compartmentalized himself, putting the bad things and the vicious life he led and the dangerous realities he faced away from the bedroom, locking them out, shutting them down.

So that it was just the two of them.

“I won’t stop unless you want me to,” he said. And if she did he would, no questions asked. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel the way he did about sex.

Rehv bent down, put his lips on hers, and kissed her carefully. As he couldn’t judge sensation, he didn’t want to grind on her, and he had the sense she would press herself closer if she wanted more-

Ehlena did just that, wrapping her arms around him and melding them hip-to-hip.

And…shit, he felt something. From out of nowhere, a flare of sensation broke through his numbness, the radiating wave dim, but very definitely warmth he could sense. For a split second he pulled back, fear spearing into him…but his vision stayed in three dimensions, and the only red he saw was from the glow of the digital clock on the nightstand.

“Is this okay?” she asked.

He waited a couple more heartbeats. “Yeah…yeah, it totally is.” His eyes traced her face. “Will you let me get you naked?”

Oh, God, did he just say that?

“Yes.”

“Oh…thank you…”

Rehv unbuttoned the front of her uniform slowly, each inch of flesh a revelation, the act not so much dishabille, but an unveiling. And he was careful with his hands as he slid the top half of what she wore off her shoulders and down over her hips to the floor. When she stood before him in her white bra and her white stockings, with the hint of her white panties showing beneath the hose, he was strangely honored.

But that wasn’t all. The scent of her sex lit off a buzz between his ears that made him feel like he’d been doing lines of coke for a week and a half straight. She wanted him. Almost as much as he wanted to serve her.

Rehv picked her up by wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her to him. She weighed nothing at all, and he knew it by the fact that his breathing didn’t change in the slightest as he carried her over and laid her out on the bed.

As he pulled back to look at her, Ehlena wasn’t like the females he’d been with. She didn’t stretch and part her legs, didn’t play with herself, didn’t arch up and do some whorish variant of come-and-get-me-big-boy.

She also didn’t want to cause him pain and didn’t have any interest in degrading him-there was no hot, erotic cruelty in her eyes.

She just stared up at him with wonder and honest anticipation, a female without artifice or calculation-who was one trillion times sexier than anyone he’d ever been with or been around.

“Do you want me clothed?” he said.

“No.”

Rehv ditched his jacket like it was made of nothing more than shopping circulars, tossing the Gucci work of art to the floor without a care. Kicking off his loafers, he undid his belt and dropped his slacks, leaving them where they landed. His shirt came off quickly. So did the socks.

He hesitated at his boxers, his thumbs tucked into the waistband, ready to do the shuck, but failing to move.

His lack of an erection embarrassed him.

Rehv wouldn’t have thought it mattered. Hell, arguably his limp cock was what made this possible. Still, he felt like less of a male.

Didn’t feel very male at all, actually.

He took his hands out and put them over his flaccid sex. “I’m going to leave these on.”

Ehlena reached for him, desire in her eyes. “I want to be with you any way you come.”

Or didn’t come, as the case was. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

There was an awkward moment, because what could she possibly reply? And yet, he waited anyway, wanting…something from her.

Reassurance?

Christ, what the fuck was wrong with him. All these bizarre thoughts and reactions were crisscrossing the landscape of his temporal lobe, blazing trails to destinations he’d only heard others speak of, places like shame and sadness and worry. Insecurity, too.

Maybe the sexual hormones she was stirring up in him were like the dopamine, hitting him in the opposite way. Turning him into a chick.

“You are beautiful in this light,” she said in a husky tone. “Your shoulders and chest are so big, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be that strong. And your stomach…I wish mine were that flat and hard. Your legs are so powerful, too, all muscle, not an ounce of fat.”

As he moved his hand upward over his six-pack to one of his pecs, he looked down at her softly rounded belly. “I think you’re perfect just as you are.”

Her voice grew serious. “And I feel the same about you.”

Rehv dragged in a breath. “Yeah?”

“You are very sexy to me. Just looking at you…makes me ache.”

Well…there you go. And yet it still took a strange kind of courage to slip his thumbs back into the waistband of his boxers and slowly draw them down his thighs.

As he stretched out next to her, his body was shaking, and he knew it because he could see his muscles tremble.

He cared what she thought about him. About his body. About what was going to happen on this bed. With the princess? He didn’t give a rat’s ass whether she enjoyed what he did to her. And those few times he’d been with his working girls, he hadn’t wanted to hurt them, of course, but it had been a transaction of sex for money.

Xhex and he had simply been a mistake. Neither good or bad. Just was and never would be again.

Ehlena ran her hands up his arms and over his shoulders. “Kiss me.”

Rehv locked eyes with her and did just that, bringing his lips to hers and stroking, then extending his tongue and licking over her mouth. He kept kissing her until she undulated on the bed and closed her hands on him so tightly that the strange echo of sensation flared in him again. The feeling made him pause and open his eyes to check his vision, but all was normal, untainted by red.

He went back to what he was enjoying, being careful because he couldn’t mediate the pressure of the contact, letting her come to him so he didn’t crush her with his mouth.

He wanted to go so much further…and she read his mind.

Ehlena was the one who undid her bra, releasing the front clasp and baring herself. Oh…fuck, yeah. Her breasts were perfectly proportioned and tipped with tight pink nipples-which he promptly sucked into his mouth one after the other.

The sound of her moans flared up his body, replacing the cold with life and energy, warmth and need.

“I want to go down on you,” he growled.

Her, “Please,” was more groan than voice, and her body gave him an even clearer answer. Now her thighs parted, her legs falling open, all the invitation he could ever have asked for.

Those stocking of hers had to come off before he chewed through them.