My own blush hit me like a runaway train, my skin going hot and tight in an instant. "Oh, my God," I squeaked out. "Yes, I did." I hadn't considered that at all when I'd made the offer to give them to him for his journey. I didn't have the sort of sense of smell where that would matter, and the fact that I'd been getting myself off at night to be able to relax enough to sleep hadn't even been on my radar.

Dain's smile was more than a bit shamefaced. "While your scent lingered, I... may have come on an almost nightly basis with my nose buried in them," he said. "It was a rather difficult temptation to resist. And, ah, the first time I put my face against them and inhaled I, ah..." He was practically crimson at this point. "I came untouched before I even realized what I was scenting. As I also did just now, tasting you orgasm against my tongue."

I stared at him, round-eyed. Oh, wow. Okay.

With an embarrassed expression, Dain turned his face to half-hide himself against my thigh. "In my defense, it was my first time having you like that, and I haven't had sex in almost a year."

"Wait, really?" I asked before I could consider the words, totally shocked. Dain had been very up-front about his sexual reputation, and after catching him in the garden at our first revel, I'd kind of assumed he'd been having sex on the side for... a while. Not recently, I didn't think, but for those first several months I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that he'd been railing people against walls on a weekly basis, at least.

He nodded, his blush starting to cool, with an expression that looked shy as much as embarrassed. "That time you saw me in the garden was the last time. The contrast was too much for me to want to have that kind of interaction again, not when I had better options." At my bewildered expression, Dain huffed a laugh and swept his thumb against my skin. "That night, one woman claimed my orgasm for the sake of the thrill of fucking a monster, and another held my hand and tangled her fingers in my hair for the sake of offering comfort and affection to a man. Why would I ever want the empty pleasure of the first when I could have the true pleasure of the second?"

"Oh," I said, the sound involuntary. Put like that... yeah, of course he wouldn't have had any interest in having sex with the women who came to him for it. That he'd ever enjoyed it said a lot about how few pleasures he had in his life. If most everything in your life is awful, even destructive pleasures become irresistibly attractive. Don't so many addicts have the same story?