Bessie stood frozen, her heart thundering so loudly she was certain Ethan could hear it. She was, in fact, a virgin—though not by choice. In the Princess's secluded manor, there were no men of the "Heavy" races, and the human nobility viewed her kind as nothing more than biological machinery. The King had permitted hundreds of servants to tend to Isabella's needs, but he was a paranoid sovereign; he allowed only women within the residence. Even the White Unicorn guards were a rare exception that had taken Isabella years of political maneuvering to secure.
For a woman of the cow-folk, whose instincts were rooted in nurturance and deep, earth-bound passion, the isolation was a slow torture. Bessie was the Head of Servants; her duty was her cage. She had spent years watching over the others, suppressing her own cravings for a man's touch. Now, a prime, powerful human was offering himself to her on a silver platter, and her mind had completely fractured.
