A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I wasn't going to put it quite so crudely, but yes. I want you in a sexual sense."
"Why?"
"Why?" he asked, confused.
"Yes, why do you want me? That is, what about me is attractive to you?"
The annoyance that flared in his eyes had me smiling to myself. "You intrigue me. I find you stimulating, both physically and mentally. And... er... you smell nice."
"I smell nice?" I tipped my head to the side to sniff myself.
His eyes flickered my way for a moment. "Yes. You smell like a woman, untainted by harsh chemical scents. You smell like a sun-warmed field of wild-flowers."
"Wow," I said, momentarily rendered speechless by his comment. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me."
"Your scent permeates the air around you," he added.
"I take it back - that just makes me sound like I have gas." I did another covert sniff of myself, but didn't notice any sun-warmed wildflower smell being emitted from any part of me.
"On the contrary, your natural scent is very pleasing. Very arousing. That's why I want you, and that is why I offered what I did."
I sat wordless for another few minutes before finally saying, "All right."
He slowed the car down to a stop right in the middle of a windswept stretch of road. "All right? You wish to have sex?"
"Well, not right this second, but yes, I will go to bed with you. You can do your best with me. But when it ends up being a hollow experience and my mind goes drifting off on its own, I'm going to let you know."
"I accept your terms," he said, setting off again.
"The only reason I'm doing this is because I have a point to prove to you," I said, which was mostly true. I still didn't really understand why I was willing to do this; I wasn't like Clare, falling in love with a new man every week. It took months for my emotions to ripen to a point where I found a man sexually stimulating.
But there was just something about him, something that seemed to call out to me, something that needed me...
"As I have with you."
"There's no way that sex without affection can possibly be better than sex with it. And although I can't show you that for yourself, I can certainly prove to you that your way is not going to work for me."
His lips quirked upward. "I have no doubt that there will be little difficulty in showing you the delights in a wholly physical relationship unencumbered by any emotional expectations beyond that of sexual satisfaction."
"In your dreams," I muttered to myself, half annoyed with his arrogant attitude, half aroused just by the thought of sleeping with him.
"We'll explore fantasy role-playing later," he said, and I spent a long time after that wondering just what his grin meant. The remainder of the drive to Paen's home was anti-climactic (literally, but we won't go there). I was momentarily surprised to see that the castle I had astrally visited was his.
"It's just like I saw when I was floating around," I said as he drove across a long causeway that connected a tiny little island with land. "I had no idea you lived in a castle. Wow. It's really impressive. It's... er... not haunted or anything, is it?"
"Haunted?" Paen frowned. "Why do you think it would be haunted?"
"Aren't most castles?"
"Mine isn't."
"Oh. How old is it?"
He spent the time it took us to circle around the castle to a parking area at the back to give me a quick history of the place. By the time he escorted me into the main building, I knew it was approximately six hundred years old, had been inherited by his father via his grandmother's mortal family, and although it was beset with a dampness issue that no amount of modern technology could seem to fix, it housed nothing more extraordinary than a family of vampires.
Which, I suppose, was pretty extraordinary when you considered it.
"How many people does it take to keep up a castle?" I asked as he walked me through a huge hall.