WASHINGTON — A former New Orleans prostitute who said U.S. Sen. David Vitter was a regular client appears in the newest edition of Hustler magazine, granting an interview alongside a naked pictorial.

Wendy Ellis, 34, says she had a relationship with the Louisiana Republican that lasted over three months when Vitter was running for Congress in 1999. The two would rendezvous at a French Quarter apartment two or three times a week, Ellis says.

A chief rule of the interaction was that Ellis was not to wear perfume, body lotions and could not take a shower when meeting with the married politician, she says.

“He did not want any scent on him whatsoever,” says Ellis, who was paid by Hustler to appear in revealing magazine photos.

Ellis was an exotic dancer in a Bourbon Street club when she was contacted by an acquaintance who ran an escort service, she says.

Ellis says she learned from her escort manager that Vitter was her state representative.

“I just blew it off,” Ellis says.

Vitter paid her $300 per visit, Ellis says, and didn’t talk much during their 20-minute sessions.

“He would always come in, hang his jacket on the door, go into the bathroom and take a shower,” Ellis says. “He would come out with a towel wrapped around him and sit down on the bed. We’d talk and then he’d do his business.”

Vitter complained about “these damn politicians” who were trying to run him out of office, Ellis says.

Vitter has declined to comment on the matter. In July, he acknowledged that his phone number appeared on the client list of a woman dubbed the “D.C. Madam,” accused by federal prosecutors of running a high-priced prostitution ring.

Vitter apologized at the time, saying that he had committed “a serious sin” in his past. He later denied “those New Orleans stories.”

A spokesman for Vitter said Thursday that the senator had already addressed the matter and was focused on passing a water resources bill critical to Louisiana.

Vitter used condoms and engaged in straight sex, “no weird fetishes or anything like that,” Ellis says in the magazine.

And Vitter would shower before leaving, she says.

“He’d get out of the shower and I’d say ‘Hey, see you later’ but he’d just walk right out the door,” she says.

Ellis, who acknowledged being a drug abuser at the time, suggested to Vitter that they start to meet privately. Vitter got spooked when Ellis told him her name is Wendy, she says, which is the name of Vitter’s wife.

But after that, Vitter went “once or twice a week” to the Bourbon Street club where she worked to watch her dance.

“It surprised me at first,” she says.

Ellis came forward because Vitter’s denial of the relationship made her look like a “lying whore” on the front page of her hometown newspaper, where her daughter could read it, she says.

Hustler Magazine Publisher Larry Flynt says Ellis passed a lie detector test on the matter.

“I’m not a liar,” Ellis says. “I’m fessing up to what I did.”